Thankless in Death
Jerry bludgeoned his parents almost beyond recognition. With the money he’s stolen from them and a
long list of grievances, he intends to finally make
his mark on the world. Lieutenant Eve Dallas and
her team already know the who, how, and why of this
murder. What they need to pinpoint is where Jerry’s
going to strike next.
9780515154139 • $7.99

The Striker
Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship
at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has been given one
week to prove his new case. He quickly finds himself
pitted against two of the most ruthless opponents he
has ever known—men of staggering ambition and
cold-bloodedness who are not about to let some
wet-behind-the-ears detective stand in their way.
9780425264683 • $9.99

Loyalty
Patriarch Carl Ludlow wants things resolved
without police, but the deeper his daughter Fina
digs in the disappearance of her sister-in-law,
the more impossible that seems. As she unearths
more dirt, the demands of family loyalty intensify.
But she is after the truth—no matter where
it lies…
9780425268520 • $9.99

Believing the Lie
At the request of the wealthy and influential Bernard
Fairclough, Inspector Thomas Lynley is investigating
the death of Fairclough’s nephew, Ian Cresswell. As
the investigation escalates, the Fairclough family’s
veneer cracks, with deception and self-delusion
threatening to destroy everyone from the patriarch to
the troubled son Ian left behind.
9780451465498 • $7.99

Dark Lover
First in the #1 New York Times bestselling Black
Dagger Brotherhood series—now featuring a
brand-new package! Beth Randall is helpless
against the dangerously sexy man who comes
to her at night. His tales of the Brotherhood and
blood frighten her. Yet his touch ignites a hunger
that threatens to consume them both.
9780451468109 • $7.99

The Broken Places
Tibbehah County sheriff Quinn Colson has his work cut
out for him when a pardoned killer returns to Jericho.
But he doesn’t count on a tornado that causes havoc
just as the manhunt heats up. Communications are
down, the roads are impassable—and the rule of law
is just about to snap.

Willing Sacrifice
Though Grace’s mind is devoid of any memory
of her love with Theronai warrior Torr, she is
inexplicably drawn to him. As they team up to
stop the invasion that threatens the people Grace
now considers family, her memories slowly start
resurfacing. But sometimes the past is best
forgotten—a lesson that Torr may learn too late…
9780451241115 • $7.99

Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes
Throughout his baseball career, Hank Greenberg heard
cheers along with anti-Semitic taunts. The abuse drove
him to legendary feats that put him in the company of the
greatest sluggers of the day, including Babe Ruth and Lou
Gehrig. This intimate account of Greenberg’s life is a story
of integrity and triumph over adversity and a portrait of one
of the greatest baseball players of the 20th century.
9780451416025 • $16.00

9780425267752 • $16.00

“Erika Robuck brings the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
to life in all her beauty and insatiability.”*
Upstate New York, 1928. Laura Kelley and the man she loves sneak away from their judgmental town to attend a performance
of the scandalous Ziegfeld Follies. But the dark consequences of their night of daring and delight reach far into the future.
That same evening, Bohemian poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband hold a wild party in their remote mountain estate, hoping to
inspire her muse. Millay declares her wish for a new lover who will take her to unparalleled heights of passion and poetry, but for the first
time, the man who responds will not bend completely to her will.
Two years later, Laura, an unwed seamstress struggling to support her daughter, and Millay, a woman fighting the passage of time, work
together secretly to create costumes for Millay’s next grand tour. As their complex, often uneasy friendship develops amid growing local
condemnation, each woman is forced to confront what it means to be a fallen woman and to decide for herself what price she is willing to
pay to live a full life.
“An electrifying read, one that crackles with passion on every page.”
—*Alyson Richman, national bestselling author of The Lost Wife

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Penguin Group (USA)

9780451418906 • $16.00

contents

MARCH 2014
B O O K PA G E . C O M

features
05

14

RUSH LIMBAUGH

The wicked stepmother gets a fair shake
in Boy, Snow, Bird, the ﬁfth novel from
this gifted young author.

Rush Revere rides into history

11

C.J. BOX
Meet the author of Stone Cold

13

NICKOLAS BUTLER
Homesickness inspires a warm debut

24 CHRISTIAN FICTION
Five stories of grace in a harsh world

25

WOMEN’S HISTORY

29 LOUIS BAYARD
Enter the Amazon with Teddy
Roosevelt and his troubled son

CAROL WALL
A gardener’s unexpected wisdom

36

LOIS EHLERT
The beloved illustrator inspires
young artists with a unique memoir

39

SPRINGTIME PICTURE BOOKS
Little readers will cheer for
the change in seasons

39

JOHN HIMMELMAN
Meet the author-illustrator
of Duck to the Rescue

columns
04
04
06
07
08
08
11

reviews
26 FICTION

TOP PICK:

The Museum of Extraordinary Things
by Alice Hoffman

ALSO REVIEWED:

Amazing real women who
blazed the trail for change

35

Helen Oyeyemi

WELL READ
AUDIO
WHODUNIT
BOOK CLUBS
COOKING
LIFESTYLES
ROMANCE

The Orchard of Lost Souls
by Nadifa Mohamed
The Weight of Blood
by Laura McHugh
A Burnable Book
by Bruce Holsinger
The Wives of Los Alamos
by TaraShea Nesbit
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu
Visible City by Tova Mirvis
The Troop by Nick Cutter

32 NONFICTION

TOP PICK:

Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley
The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger
Gemini by Carol Cassella
Byrd by Kim Church
Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
Mannequin Girl by Ellen Litman
While Beauty Slept
by Elizabeth Blackwell
The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier
The All You Can Dream Buffet
by Barbara O’Neal

Blood Will Out by Walter Kirn

Astoria by Peter Stark
Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty
Trapped Under the Sea
by Neil Swidey
The Splendid Things We Planned
by Blake Bailey
The Perfect Score Project
by Debbie Stier

How Paris Became Paris
by Joan DeJean
The Ogallala Road by Julene Bair
Stokely by Peniel E. Joseph
Mother of God by Paul Rosolie
You Must Remember This
by Robert J. Wagner
Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening
by Carol Wall

37 TEEN

38 CHILDREN’S

TOP PICK:

TOP PICK:

ALSO REVIEWED:

ALSO REVIEWED:

Where’s Mommy?
by Beverly Donofrio
Five Kingdoms: Sky Raiders
by Brandon Mull
Screaming at the Ump
by Audrey Vernick

Sukey Howard

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Julia Steele

Allison Hammond

EDITOR

CONTRIBUTOR

Lynn L. Green

Roger Bishop

MANAGING EDITOR

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Trisha Ping

Penny Childress

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER

Joelle Herr

Elizabeth Grace Herbert

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

AD COMMUNICATIONS

Cat Acree

Angela J. Bowman

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

MARKETING MANAGER

Hilli Levin

Mary Claire Zibart

“Haunting.”
—Joseph Olshan

“Brilliant.”

—anna Jean Mayhew
—Jim Kokoris

EDITORIAL POLICY

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Third Hill
North
of Town

“unfOrgettaBle.”

A M E R I C A’ S B O O K R E V I E W
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

The

Half a Chance
by Cynthia Lord

The Mirk and Midnight Hour
by Jane Nickerson
Grandmaster by David Klass
Half Bad by Sally Green

Michael A. Zibart

NOAH
BLY

ALSO REVIEWED:

Threatened
by Eliot Schrefer

PUBLISHER

A poignant and
powerful debut novel
about unlikely
friendships amidst
the turbulent 1960s.

Individual print subscriptions
are available for $30 per year.
Send payment to:

Not unlike Frankenstein, that
other Gothic masterwork of the 19th
century, Robert Louis Stevenson’s
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde—originally published in
1886—is a surprisingly slight book
whose enduring impact has far
outstripped its original ambitions.
At barely a hundred pages, it is a
quickly read novella, as noteworthy
for what is left unsaid as for what is
portrayed. This classic good vs. evil
fable has provided the template and
inspiration for an array of adaptations and interpretations over the
last century and a quarter. The latest
is Hyde, Daniel Levine’s ambitious
and imaginative literary debut.
Touted as the first time the story
has been retold
from Hyde’s
Hyde invites point of view—a
readers into claim that might
be impossible
the confused to prove—Hyde
is a far more
mind of
psychologically
Dr. Jekyll’s
probing work
fascinating
than the original. Levine has
alter ego.
made a shrewd
narrative choice
crafting the story in the first person,
which invites readers directly into
the confused and conflicted mind of
Dr. Jekyll’s fascinating alter ego. Stevenson’s story was born of a dream
he had, and as Levine writes with
post-Jungian insight in an introduction to the original tale—which the
publisher has thoughtfully included
in its entirety at the end of the
volume—“Dreams span universal
across human consciousness, evoking the primal fantasies and neuroses that define our peculiar species.
Jekyll and Hyde’s extraordinary success can be linked not so much to its
clever artistry as to its conjuration of
our most nightmarish fascination:
the horror of self-transformation. . . .
The story is a veil masquerading
as truth, stiffened into a simplified
metaphor of human duality. But the
dream lives behind it, complex and
primeval, the untold tale of the inner man, the sociopath, the other I.”
Taking the parameters of Stevenson’s story, but deepening and
extending the details, Levine allows
us to view Hyde not merely as the
venal incarnation of Jekyll’s soul,
but as a fully fledged character in
his own right—and, in many ways, a

sympathetic
one as well, as
the unwitting
end product,
or victim if
you will, of
Jekyll’s violation of nature. The violence and the
murders are here, but seen from
Hyde’s perspective, they are often
explainable in ways that Stevenson’s
readers could not have imagined.
Indeed, Levine answers many questions that Stevenson left unexplored.
In the process, Hyde is offered up
as a misunderstood outsider, a man
who is riled by injustice and feels
the pain of the mistreated. So, when
he becomes the target of hatred and
the quarry of a mysterious vigilante,
we come to understand that guilt,
if there is any, should be laid at the
feet of Jekyll, not Hyde.
Levine is quite adept at lending
his narrative a Victorian flavor. Hyde
reads less like a historical novel
written in our century than a work
of its age, with one reservation, of
course: Levine has the benefit of
post-Freudian hindsight, and even
as Hyde struggles to understand his
own motivations, his self-knowledge
is perhaps a bit “modern,” even if we
allow for the fact that his host mind
belongs to the “alienist” Dr. Jekyll.
This is a visually dark and viscerally
brooding tale that avails itself of a
cinematic style of storytelling that,
of course, Stevenson could never
have imagined. And given the lean
narrative skeleton Stevenson’s original provides, Levine at times tries to
layer on too much skin. Still, Hyde
is an entertaining and intriguing
work, as much a meditation on and
extrapolation of Stevenson’s original
intentions as a freestanding work
of popular fiction. With compelling
intensity, Levine makes a noteworthy literary debut.

HYDE
By Daniel Levine

HMH
$24, 416 pages
ISBN 9780544191181
eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

Mark Billingham is hardly a new
kid on the crime fiction block—his
books have sold more than 3 million
copies worldwide. But he and his
main man, Detective Inspector Tom
Thorne, are new to me and to audio,
and I’m delighted to meet them
both, if one is allowed to be “delighted” by intense police procedurals,
serial killers and tautly twisted plots.
Scaredy Cat (HighBridge, $34.95,
11.5 hours, ISBN 9781622312900),
narrated by the always-spot-on
Simon Prebble, is the second in a
series that’s now in the double digits
and is a great way to get to know the
thorny, edgy, driven detective. When

couple
memoir, told
and read in
their decidedly distinct
voices,
answers
my question, for the most part.
Early on, their marriage was called
a sham, a publicity stunt, but it’s
lasted. As the book’s subtitle reveals, the union has produced two
beloved daughters and endured a
life-changing move to New Orleans.
Matalin and Carville’s thoughts
on politics and marriage are truly
entertaining and prove, once again,
that love can conquer all.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO

two women are strangled in the
same way, on the same day, Thorne
and his quirky London-based team
assume they’re looking for a serial
killer. As the body count rises, they
realize they’re dealing with a deadly
duo for whom murder is a grisly
team sport. This is not a whodunit
in the classic sense, and that makes
it all the more intriguing. We get the
killers’ adolescent backstory, but
neither we nor Thorne can put an
adult face on the warped teenager
who started this murder spree years
ago and is still its mastermind—until the jolting denouement. Luckily,
more Tom Thorne audios are in the
works and on their way.

A MIRACULOUS MARRIAGE
I don’t know how they do it.
“They” are the quintessential
Republican Mary Matalin, key
campaign strategist for Poppy Bush
in 1992, assistant to W and prime
protégé of Dick Cheney, and James
Carville, the quintessential Democrat and Clinton’s brilliant campaign
manager in ’92 who’s gone on to
become a sought-after international
political consultant. “It” is a long
marriage that’s weathered the political tsunamis of the last two decades.
And Love & War: Twenty Years,
Three Presidents, Two Daughters
and One Louisiana Home (Penguin, $39.95, 10.5 hours, ISBN
9781611762389), their joint power-

Nickolas Butler’s debut novel,
Shotgun Lovesongs, is an indie ode
to male friendship with its complex
mix of testosterone and tenderness,
to the women who stand by their
men or don’t, to small-town connectedness and to Midwestern grit,
goodness and grace. Henry, Lee,
Ronnie, Kip and Beth—who grew
up together in Little Wing, Wisconsin—unfold their intertwined
stories in their own very different
voices, fully brought to life by five
compelling readers. Lee has become
a celebrity singer/songwriter with
platinum records galore; Kip made
a bundle as a commodities trader;
Ronnie rode the rodeo until it broke
him; and Henry stayed on the farm
and married Beth. Going forward
and back in time, punctuated by
four weddings and one divorce, they
let us see the ties that bind (and,
sometimes, chafe), the pull of home
and the pull to get away. Butler has a
good ear and a lyric understanding
of the heart and the heartland.

Read our interview with Nickolas Butler on
page 13.

SHOTGUN LOVESONGS
By Nickolas
Butler

Macmillan Audio
$39.99, 10 hours
ISBN 9781427236357

DEBUT FICTION

cover story

RUSH LIMBAUGH
BY BETH E. WILLIAMS

Rush Revere rides again

Take our Reader Survey
for your chance to win.

A

fter his first children’s book became one of the
best-selling books of 2013, Rush Limbaugh
returns with a second adventure featuring his
time-traveling alter ego, Rush Revere.

In Rush Revere and the First
Patriots, on sale March 11, the talk
radio host takes young readers back
in time to meet Benjamin Franklin,
Patrick Henry,
Samuel Adams
—and of
course, Paul
Revere—as
they set
America on a
course toward
freedom from
British rule.
The tour guide
RUSH LIMBAUGH for this adventure is Rush
Revere, a substitute history teacher
at Manchester Middle School. Rush
takes students Cam and Tommy
along when he travels through time
for a visit to the exciting Revolutionary era. Joining Rush and the kids
for the journey is Liberty, the most
talkative horse since Mr. Ed.
Rush Revere made his first appearance in Rush Revere and the
Brave Pilgrims, which became an
instant #1 New York Times bestseller
when it was published on October
29. Aimed at young readers, the
book also proved popular with
adults, and currently has 900,000
copies in print. Rush Revere and the
Brave Pilgrims ranked #4 on Amazon’s print bestseller list for 2013.
Limbaugh is the host of “The Rush
Limbaugh Show,” the highest-rated
talk radio program in the country,
with millions of listeners tuning in
every weekday to hear his conservative commentary. Unlike many other
media personalities on the right (including Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin and
Glenn Beck), who generate a torrent
of books, Limbaugh has been a rare
presence in the publishing world.
His only two books for adults, The
Way Things Ought to Be and See,
I Told You So, both #1 bestsellers,
were published in 1992 and 1993.
Twenty years later, Limbaugh finally
decided to write another book—this
time for children.
In the acknowledgments for Rush
Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, he
explains why:
“For years, people were telling me

I should write another book. I would
shrug them off, giving one excuse
after the other. I just wasn’t inspired
to write more political commentary.
“Then, in early 2013, my wife,
Kathryn, suggested an entirely different idea. She reminded me how
often I talked about the importance
of young peple learning the truth
about American history. She knew
my frustration with what many kids
are learning today and suggested
that I tell the amazing stories of our
country’s founding in an easy-tounderstand way.”
Limbaugh keeps the story in Rush
Revere and the First Patriots fastpaced, grounded in history and often
funny. Much of the humor comes
from Liberty the horse, who can not
only talk and chew gum, but also
deliver a swift kick to the rear end of
a British soldier when needed.
Also on tap: a Stamp Act protest
song, sung to the tune of Carly Rae
Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.” (“Hey,
we just left you / And this is crazy /
You never asked us / Don’t tax our
colonies.”)
Limbaugh’s book focuses on
teaching the people, places and
events from America’s past, and with
Rush Revere as a guide, that history
is rarely dry.

A slippery situation in the Gulf
Black Horizon (Harper, $25.99,
384 pages, ISBN 9780062109880),
the 11th book in James Grippando’s
popular series featuring Florida
attorney Jack Swyteck, opens with
the two most important words of
the lawyer’s life: “I do.” (Ha, ha—you
thought I was going to say, “Not
guilty.”) The beach wedding in
scenic Key Largo goes wildly awry
when an epic storm arises in the
Gulf, launching manifold repercussions for Swyteck and his new bride.
One of the victims of the storm is a
young Cuban oil rig worker whose
wife emigrated to the
U.S. ahead of him. He
had planned to follow,
but the deadly combination of high winds and
an explosive oil spill
have put paid to those
plans forever. Now his
wife would like Swyteck
to file a wrongful death
suit against the Chinese/
Russian/Venezuelan/
Cuban consortium that
owns the oil rig. This is no easy feat,
since the rig is in Cuban waters,
and the only tenuous tie to the U.S.
legal system is the wife’s residency
in Key West. The situation is volatile;
the adversaries are lethal; and the
backdrop is a toxic oil slick poised
to slime the Florida coast. Black
Horizon is timely, relentlessly paced
and a thrill ride of the first order.

BON VIVANT

See Page 12 for more details.

WHODUNIT

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1
Ladies Detective Agency stories
calved a new genre, splitting the
difference between hardboiled
detective novels and cozies. Martin
Walker nails it precisely with his latest Bruno, Chief of Police novel, The
Resistance Man (Knopf, $25.95, 336
pages, ISBN 9780385349543). This
time out, Bruno investigates the
death of a veteran of the French Resistance and discovers papers linking the man to a famous WWII train
robbery. Detective fiction is often
plot-driven, but the Bruno books are
character-driven and, perhaps even
more so, locale-driven. Set in the
fictional village of St. Denis in the
Perigord region of France, The Resistance Man evokes all the history,
culture, romance and fine food and
drink you might expect of French
village life, and yet there is still the
opportunity for a heinous crime or

two to spice things up from time to
time. The series is endlessly charming, funny, warm and clever, with a
hero evocative of John Mortimer’s
Rumpole or Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri.
The Resistance Man is sure to satiate Walker’s many fans and win him
lots more in the bargain.

ICE-COLD CASE
Leif GW Persson’s Free Falling,
As If in a Dream (Pantheon, $27.95,
ISBN 9780307377470), the final
volume in his acclaimed Story of
a Crime trilogy, requires a certain

amount of commitment on the
part of the reader. For starters, it
comes in at a whopping 608 pages.
Also, it would make sense to read
the two preceding volumes beforehand. That said, these books will be
among the most fascinating 1,600odd pages of Scandinavian crime
fiction you will likely ever read. Persson borrows little from his Midnight
Sun compatriots (Larsson, Nesbø,
et al.) in terms of style; his novels
read rather like a documentary,
perhaps even more so because the
storyline follows a 2007 investigation into the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a
real-life crime that, to date, has not
been solved. Lead investigator Lars
Martin Johansson, soon to retire,
would like to cap off his career with
a win. Self-described as “allergic to
unsolved cases,” he directs his team
through thousands of pages of text
and testimony in search of a thread
that might begin to unravel the
two-decade cold case. As you might
imagine with a work of this magnitude, subplots, double dealings and
red herrings abound, so be prepared
to form and reform opinions again
and again. This is a fine wrap-up to
a highly regarded series.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY
I have been a huge Kem Nunn

fan since
his 1984
debut novel,
Tapping
the Source,
essentially
established
a whole new genre of crime fiction,
“Surf Noir,” a genre he last revisited
in 2004’s Tijuana Straits. However,
there are no sun-dappled waves in
his latest novel, Chance. It is instead
an ink-dark psychological thriller
about a Bay Area neuropsychiatrist and his beautiful, damaged
patient, a woman with
secrets powerful enough
to destroy both their
lives. Their chemistry is
fascinating to observe:
She apparently suffers from dissociative
disorder, fragmenting
into personalities—
either composed or
overtly sexual—to suit
her interpretation of the
situation; he is in the
process of a divorce, at times thoroughly professional, at other times
lonely and at loose ends. It is only a
matter of time until “lonely” collides
with “sexual,” and the sparks begin
to fly. Add a jealous husband (a
cop!), some shady Romanian thugs,
an elderly antiques dealer and his
sociopath assistant, and you have a
recipe for mayhem and murder. A
small spoiler alert: Many suspense
novels offer up a denouement, after
which loose ends are wrapped up
tidily. Not so with Chance. That satisfying moment does not arrive until
the very last sentence. It won’t help
to page ahead to the end, though;
the sentence is meaningless without
every other sentence preceding it. It
has been 10 years since Nunn’s last
novel, and Chance was well worth
the wait.

CHANCE
By Kem Nunn

Scribner
$26, 336 pages
ISBN 9780743289245
Audio, eBook available

THRILLER

BOOK CLUBS
BY JULIE HALE

New paperback releases
for reading groups

ADVICE FOR UP-AND-COMERS
In his ingenious third novel, How
to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
(Riverhead, $16, 240 pages, ISBN
9781594632334), Mohsin Hamid
spoofs the self-help business guides
that are all the rage among Asia’s
would-be entrepreneurs. Throughout the narrative, he writes from
the second-person point of view,
employing “you” to refer to his
anonymous protagonist, a poor
young man from a provincial part of
Asia, who, armed with a little educa-

from an
ItalianAmerican
family, has a
feisty spirit
and an unpredictable
disposition.
With her
moodiness, her endless need for
drugs and her taste for drama, she’s
an unforgettable character, and Ruta
does a wonderful job of bringing
out the paradoxes in her mother’s
personality. Ruta’s own struggle with
addiction is part of the story, and
she writes about it with unflinching
honesty. She depicts her unorthodox
upbringing with dark humor and
lucid prose, making her relationship
with Kathi come alive on the page.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS

tion and a lot of ambition, seeks
opportunities in the big city. He tries
his hand at various enterprises and
eventually becomes rich through a
(somewhat sketchy) bottled-water
business. His big dream, though,
involves a woman whose fortunes
have run a similar course. Composed of 12 chapters, each of which
bears a scrap of advice as a title—
Work for Yourself; Have an Exit
Strategy—this masterfully crafted
story captures the manners and mores of contemporary Asia, but also
serves as a shrewd commentary on
the desires that drive us all. This is a
remarkably inventive novel from a
writer who isn’t afraid to take risks.

MOTHER-DAUGHTER
In her vividly realized memoir, With or Without You (Spiegel & Grau, $16, 240 pages, ISBN
9780812983401), Domenica Ruta
looks back on the turbulent childhood she experienced with her
drug-addicted mother, Kathi. Raised
in Danvers, Massachusetts, she
grows up in a household where
poverty and mayhem are the order
of the day, overseen by a mom
who’s often dysfunctional. Money is
always short. The time Ruta spends
with her father in his comfortable, suburban neighborhood only
heightens the sense of deprivation
she feels at home. Kathi, who comes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s
hypnotic third novel, Americanah,
tells the story of Ifemelu, a confident, beautiful Nigerian who immigrates to America. In her new home,
Ifemelu struggles to adapt and to
survive financially. But she makes it
through college, starts an acclaimed
blog about race, and wins a fellowship to Princeton. All the while she’s
haunted by memories of her former
boyfriend, Obinze. Soft-spoken and
introverted, Obinze immigrates
to London where he ekes out an
uncertain existence before being
deported. Back home, he becomes
wealthy as a property developer.
When Ifemelu returns to Nigeria,
her old feelings for him are revived,
and the pair find themselves in the
grip of passion. Both are forced to
make difficult decisions about the
future. Adichie’s dramatic, sweeping
narrative functions as an emotionally riveting love story, as a profound
meditation on race and as a revealing exploration of the immigrant
experience. It succeeds—beautifully—on every level.

A

AMERICANAH
By Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie

Anchor
$15.95, 608 pages
ISBN 9780307455925

LITERARY FICTION

Fresh Fiction
New in Paperback
A captivating debut novel
in the tradition of Lisa See
and Amy Tan
“An intoxicating story of
family, ambition and
the risks we take for love.”
—Tara Conklin,
New York Times bestselling
author of The House Girl

A novel about two sisters,
their mother and the secrets
and lies that define them.
“Loaded with emotion,
laughter, surprise and
ultimately the message of the
fragility of life, Two Sisters will
burn through the sisterhood
of book clubs like a fever.”
—Adriana Trigiani,
bestselling author of
The Shoemaker’s Wife
From New York Times
bestselling author
Deborah Crombie comes
the newest mystery
featuring London
detectives Duncan Kincaid
and Gemma James
“Sound of Broken Glass
is a real gem.”
—Ventura County Star
The irresistible, blazing-hot
sequel to New York Times
bestselling author
Molly McAdams’s
Forgiving Lies
Rachel is supposed to be
planning her wedding to Kash,
the love of her life. But there’s
something else waiting—
something threatening to
tear them apart.

PERFECT FOR BOOK CLUBS
@WilliamMorrowPB

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William Morrow Paperbacks

Book Club Girl

7

COOKING

LIFESTYLES

BY SYBIL PRATT

BY JOANNA BRICHETTO

In stitches

Mangia la verdura!
Italians love their veggies and
have learned over centuries to use
their creative kitchen magic to
transform readily available produce
into a super selection of antipasti,
crostini, panini, soups and sides,
veggie-rich risottos, sauces and
stews, and dolce for a sweet finale.
The Italian Vegetable Cookbook
(Rux Martin/HMH, $30, 336 pages,
ISBN 9780547909165) is awardwinning cookbook author and food
expert Michele Scicolone’s tantalizing tribute to this mostly meatless
(you’ll find a few anchovies, some
pancetta, bacon or guanciale used

to amp up the flavor, but you can
easily omit them) aspect of la cucina
Italiana. Scicolone has collected
more than 200 recipes, from a very
simple, one-pot supper entrée
like Orecchiette with Potatoes and
Arugula to a more elaborate Easter
Swiss Chard and Ricotta Pie with a
tender olive-oil crust. None of these
dishes are very complicated, and all
invite you to vary ingredients, using
the fruits and vegetables that look
best at the moment, as any good
Italian cook would do. Scicolone is a
warm, friendly kitchen companion,
sharing the stories behind the recipes in her chatty header notes.

A SOUTHERN REVIVAL

8

Alexe van Beuren loves Water
Valley, a small town not too far from
Oxford, Mississippi, that had seen
better days before she restored a
landmark building on Main Street,
saving it from demolition in 2010.
She turned it into the B.T.C. OldFashioned Grocery, a general store,
and became part of the Southern
town’s revival. When Dixie Grimes, a
pro chef with an impressive background, came on the scene, she
made the B.T.C. kitchen sing, and
that song got national attention. Van
Beuren tells the story charmingly in
The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery
Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $29.99,
240 pages, ISBN 9780385345002),

TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS
A few years ago, the food world
wonks proclaimed that Spain was
the new France. Luckily, Spain remained Spain in all its rich regional
splendor, its culinary soul intact.
Now, Jeff Koehler—a longtime Barcelona resident and aficionado of
Spanish food and the diverse, beautiful, bountiful landscapes reflected
in that food—offers a beautiful,
bountiful celebration in recipes and
photographs in Spain: Recipes and
Traditions from the Verdant Hills of
the Basque Country to the Coastal
Waters of Andalucía. If you read the
wonderfully informed recipe intros
and the delightful asides on iconic
ingredients—like saffron, pimentón,
olive oil and anchovies—and on
traditions and special holidays,
you’ll find yourself in the hands
of an expert guide. And, when you
start cooking from the 200 recipes
featured, you’ll begin to understand
the strong Spanish connection to
the land in the many unfussy dishes
that originated as country fare. But,
most of all, you’ll be turning out
authentic, flavor-loaded wonders
like Monkfish Steaks with Saffron or
Chicken with Shallots and Orange
and Cinnamon Sauce, as satisfying
in Sioux City as they are in Salamanca.

SPAIN
By Jeff Koehler

Chronicle
$40, 352 pages
ISBN 9780811875011

INTERNATIONAL

Crochet: The Complete Stepby-Step Guide (DK, $40, 320 pages,
ISBN 9781465415912) is so comprehensive—covering every essential
technique and laying out instructions and step-by-step photography
for more than 50 projects—I was
actually beginning to get crotchety
leafing through it, trying to find
one darned thing (so to speak)
that the magisterial committee
of author-experts might possibly
have neglected to mention. However, it’s all there, the whole kit and
caboodle: hook, line and slipknot,
every yarn completely spun and

new vision
of creativity,
a manifesto
for the
imagination’s quest
to reach
fellow human beings. At a crucial
turn in this fabulous little wallop of
a book comes the simple directive,
“Share something small every day.”
That “something” oughtn’t be your
Instagrammed latte or a selfie, but
something “useful or interesting”
about your work. Put enough somethings out there, and a lone artist or
entrepreneur can soon be a productive part of a creative community.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES

beautifully illustrated. With everything you’ve always wanted to
know about patterns and embellishments, anything you’ve never even
thought to wonder about openwork
or popcorn textures, you’ll be ready
to get going on dozens of gift ideas,
from the practical (socks, hoodies)
to the whimsical (teddy bears, finger
puppets). It’s all here, one stitch at a
time, all ready to save nine.

DARE TO SHARE
It’s not often that I find myself
reviewing a book that I can say has
already changed my life. The transformation is not earth-shattering,
nor has it resulted in any measurable realignment of the cosmos.
On the contrary, the whole point
Austin Kleon makes so brilliantly in
Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share
Your Creativity and Get Discovered
(Workman, $11.95, 224 pages, ISBN
9780761178972) is that the best ways
to affect a dramatic change in your
life—so that people will notice the
really cool things you’re up to—are
small. Ingeniously modest. Eminently doable. Quotidian. Cumulative. And ultimately irresistible. In
one concise chapter after another,
Kleon takes on the entire range of
assumptions artful people tend to
make about their own art-making,
launching a good-natured assault
on fruitless myths, gently dismantling bootless neuroses and finally
offering something that adds up to a

As a civilizing principle, gardens
have always been places where we
have dominion, where nature bows
to our will. But thanks to a growing
eco-consciousness, the worm is literally turning. What might a garden
look like that welcomes as many living things as possible, that not only
admits wildlife, but beckons it? That
is the question answered in spades
(I couldn’t resist) by author Tammi
Hartung in The Wildlife-Friendly
Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow
Food in Harmony with Nature.
Through a fertile counterpoint of
facts, anecdotes and delightful
hand-colored drawings by Holly
Ward Bimba, Hartung makes us
more mindful of every stage of the
process through which our garden
vegetables flourish in the presence
of the wild. Lovingly, sweetly, intelligently, the book opens up new
physical and spiritual ground, on
which our gardens will grow best on
account of the presence of insects
and animals, not in spite of them.
From the management of manure
to proper protection from real pests,
no garden stone is left unturned.

Just how
far are
people willing
to go to keep
their secrets?
From New York Times bestselling author

B. J. DANIELS
From New York Times bestselling author

comes a brand-new series where passion
and scandal collide, leaving four sisters
determined to rescue themselves from ruin….
Go to www.Harlequin.com/TheTroubleWithHonor
and download your FREE extended excerpt of

Undercover lover
In Shana Galen’s Sapphires
Are an Earl’s Best Friend (Casablanca, $7.99, 352 pages, ISBN
9781402269790), Lily Dawson, the
celebrated “Countess of Charm,”
is known as a beautiful and experienced courtesan. In reality, she
works for the Crown, tasked with
uncovering the identity of the person behind a plot to an assassinate
Britain’s most talented spies. Lily’s
mission takes her to the household
of a duke, and she’s willing to do
what she must to learn his secrets
. . . until the duke’s son, Andrew
Booth-Payne, the Earl of Darlington,

gets in her way. Lily loves Andrew,
but he’s always been interested in
her best friend. Now in close proximity to the intriguing and mysterious Lily, Andrew finds he can’t resist
her. As he begins to suspect she isn’t
the practiced lover she pretends to
be, he wonders about her true agenda. When he discovers the truth, he
feels betrayed. But will they survive
in order to deal with it? Complex
characters and tender emotion
round out an action-filled story.

SIZZLING SUSPENSE
Kate Brady offers a tale of chilling
romantic suspense in Where Evil
Waits (Forever, $8, 432 pages, ISBN
9781455502066). Special prosecutor Kara Chandler fears for her life
and that of her son, leading her to
hire cartel assassin Luke Varón to
keep them safe. Luke is startled by
the request—Kara has every reason
to despise him. But when he learns
that she’s begun looking into her
husband’s “accidental” death and
that the people she talks to about it
are turning up dead, Luke’s not only
curious—he’s worried. Her investigation might put his own at risk.
Actually an FBI agent, Luke’s in the
middle of a covert operation. Not
only can he not afford the distraction of guarding beautiful Kara, but
his investigation is also bound up in

the criminal
enterprise
of her late
husband.
Still, he can’t
say no to the
smart and
sexy woman. After Luke reveals his
true identity, they get romantically
involved and realize they’ve been
looking in the wrong direction for
the bad guy. A creepy villain, great
chemistry and a compelling plot
make this a standout story.

meet C.J. BOX

Q: What’s the title of your new book?

MICHAEL SMITH

columns

would you describe the book
Q: How
in one sentence?

makes your character, Joe Pickett, especially well-suited for
Q: What
his job as a game warden?

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE
In Virginia Kantra’s Carolina Man,
Marine Luke Fletcher is in Afghanistan when he learns that he has a
10-year-old daughter, Taylor. The
girl’s mother—Luke’s high school
girlfriend—has just passed away,
so Luke has been granted custody,
despite the protests of the girl’s
maternal grandparents. His deployment over, Luke returns to his family home on Dare Island to become
a father to his daughter. Though unsure in his new role, Luke is certain
about his attraction to lawyer Kate
Dolan. Kate feels drawn to Luke,
but as the child of an abusive father
who was also a Marine, she’s wary
of getting emotionally attached to
anyone, let alone a military man.
Still, it’s hard to turn away from the
strong warrior with good intentions,
and before long, Kate finds herself
falling for him and Taylor, too. But
can the three of them truly come
together as a family when Luke’s
military career will bring lengthy
separations? Filled with tender moments and sexy, sparkling exchanges, Kantra’s latest Dare Island romance is satisfying and sigh-worthy.
Kate and Luke must learn to trust
and let go of their guilt in order to
find happiness together. A shivery,
sensual and sensational read.

counting Yellowstone, what are your three favorite things
Q: Not
about Wyoming?

Q: What is one book you love that might surprise your fans?

Q: When (if ever) do you take off your cowboy hat?

are said to live by the “Code of the West.” How would
Q: Cowboys
you summarize your own personal code?

STONE COLD
CAROLINA MAN
By Virginia Kantra

Berkley
$7.99, 304 pages
ISBN 9780425268872
eBook available

CONTEMPORARY
ROMANCE

The critically acclaimed Joe Pickett mystery series
by Wyoming native C.J. Box has garnered a host of
awards since its debut in 2001, including the Edgar
Award, the Anthony Award and the Mountains &
Plains Independent Booksellers Award. The latest
installment, Stone Cold (Putnam, $26.95, 384 pages,
ISBN 9780399160769), takes Pickett to a remote part
of Wyoming on the trail of a mysterious stranger.
Box and his wife Laurie live outside Cheyenne.

wanted to write about Wisconsin,” Nickolas Butler says of the
genesis of his soulful first novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, which
gave voice to his homesickness.

“My first semester at the [Iowa]
Writers Workshop, I was down there
alone. I was sleeping in this terrible
apartment,” Butler says. Picture
a fire-engine-red lower section
of a bunk bed borrowed from his
brother-in-law, a white table borrowed from his mother-in-law, and
a folding chair, the only furnishings
in the Iowa City apartment where
Butler lived from Monday to Thursday before returning to his family.
“I missed my wife; I missed my
son; I was just overcome by loneliness and homesickness,” he recalls.
“I was sitting at that table, thinking
about my hometown, and I started
writing. The first 35 pages came
basically in one sitting.”
Those opening pages are told
from the point of view of Henry
“Hank” Brown, who, with his wife
Beth and their two young children,
struggles to maintain a family farm
on the outskirts of a tiny Wisconsin
town named Little Wing. Hank’s is
one of five voices that tell this story
of contemporary small-town Wisconsin life and of close friendships
disrupted by the passage of time.
“There’s a little bit of me in every
character,” Butler says during a call
that reaches him at his home in Fall
Creek, Wisconsin, a hamlet outside
of Eau Claire, where he grew up.
“Hank is probably the moral, ethical
side of me. He’s got this strong moral

compass. He’s the most boring character in the book for me, frankly.
Because basically he’s not going to
do anything wrong, and that’s not
super exciting.”
Most readers won’t actually agree
with Butler’s assessment of Hank’s
boredom factor. Hank is the novel’s
true north, an intelligent, observant
exemplar of the best of Midwestern
values. He is in many ways a far
better man than his close childhood
friend, turned not-so-close friend,
Leland “Lee” Sutton, who under
the nom de
musique Corvus
has become an
Small-town
international
Wisconsin
rock star. Lee’s
roots link
first album—
ﬁve longtime “Shotgun
Lovesongs”—
friends in
was recorded
Butler’s
in a converted
lyrical novel. chicken coop
outside of Little
Wing and gives
the novel its title. Lee’s ill-advised
confession to Hank leads to one of
the bigger disruptions among boyhood friends in Little Wing.
The character of Leland has also
already brought some national media attention to Shotgun Lovesongs
because of Butler’s real-life relationship with Justin Vernon, founder
of the Grammy-winning band Bon
Iver. Butler went to high school with
Vernon, so some early readers have
assumed that Leland is a thinly
veiled representation of Vernon.
Butler says he hasn’t spoken to Vernon in 18 years.
“You have to understand that
in this community there was no
template for artistic success before
him. Justin gave a lot of us this sense
of confidence that we could go out
and do something different. So the
character Leland is inspired by him,
but he’s obviously not based on
him. Justin has never been shot in
the leg, and I don’t think he’s even
ever been married. One thing that
sets him apart from so many other
people is that he went away, gained
success, and then came home. He’s
really involved in the community.
Being homesick for Eau Claire and

thinking about
its landscape, he
was a really nice
way to get into
all of that.”
Still, Butler
says there’s
much more of
himself than
Vernon in the
character of Lee.
“The story of
Lee’s first album
is a lot about the
pressure I felt
with this book.
I was nearing
the end of grad
school. I’d had a
string of terrible
jobs that never
paid any money
at all and were at
times dangerous, and I didn’t want
to go back to that. I had a young kid,
and I just wanted to be something
more. So I felt a great pressure and
urgency to write the book.”
Through Lee’s and Hank’s difficulties with each other, Shotgun
Lovesongs vividly portrays the
tensions that sometimes develop
in male friendships as people grow
away from high school and college
and into adulthood.
“I’m hitting a point in my life
when some of the easy friendships
are becoming more difficult because
of all the different real-world pressures: money, marriage, kids and
jobs,” Butler says. “All of a sudden
friends begin wondering why it’s so
easy for somebody and so difficult
for somebody else to make money.
Why is it easy for couple A to have
kids when couple B can’t? Something happens when these sorts of
jealousies get overlaid on long-term
friendships. I was experiencing a
little bit of that in my life and was
wondering why.”
Butler’s novel also voices an
emphatic love song to what he calls
“my place on earth,” and to smalltown life in general. Not that Butler
is unaware of the difficulties and of
the changing nature of America’s
small towns. Several characters in
the novel end up leaving for greater

OLIVE JUICE STUDIOS

BY ALDEN MUDGE

opportunities in Chicago or Minneapolis. Lee for a while lives in a
rural boarding house with Mexican
laborers. “I don’t think it’s offensive
to say, but a lot of the work being
done around here is not being done
by natural-born American citizens.
It’s being done by really hardworking Mexican people, and that’s not
something I’ve seen in literature. For
me it was important to say, hey, this
is the face of small-town America
right now. It’s not what you think.”
For a number of years while he
made his weekly trips to Iowa,
Butler and his wife, an attorney and
“a voracious reader,” and their son
lived in the Twin Cities area. As he
was revising the novel, the couple
had a second child. Butler says they
had been saving for years to return
to the Eau Claire area, where his
wife had also grown up. With the
sale of the novel, last August they
bought their house and 16 acres of
land in Fall Creek. “My kids have all
four grandparents within a 10-minute drive,” Butler says. “You can’t
beat that.”
And despite the fact that it is 18
below zero outside when we begin
our conversation, Butler says, “This
world that I inhabit is important to
me. It is beautiful to me. . . . I feel extremely fortunate now. I do feel like
I’m kind of living inside a dream.”

ere’s the first thing you should know about
Helen Oyeyemi: She’s got a soft spot for twisted
fairy tales. Her widely acclaimed first novel,
The Icarus Girl, drew from both African and Western
mythology to tell the story of a biracial 8-year-old and
her wicked secret friend.

Her next two books, The Opposite House and White Is for Witching, address Cuban mysticism and
Gothic horror, respectively. Mr. Fox,
which she penned in 2011, recasts
the classic Bluebeard folktale as a
story about an English writer with a
nasty habit of murdering his female
characters.
Here’s the second thing to know
about Helen Oyeyemi: She wrote all
four of those books before the age
of 27.
The award-winning British
novelist (and daughter of Nigerian
immigrants) shows no signs of slowing down, having just published
her fifth book, Boy, Snow, Bird, a sly
retelling of Snow White.
“I never really set out to rewrite
fairy tales,” she told BookPage
during a recent telephone conversation from her home in Prague
(where she moved last year on a
whim). “I just get really interested
in them. Perhaps it’s because there’s
something about the retelling that
exposes the teller. You have this very

BOY, SNOW, BIRD

By Helen Oyeyemi

Riverhead, $27.95, 320 pages
ISBN 9781594631399, eBook available

14

LITERARY FICTION

old frame that’s been used by various other storytellers through the
generations—an anchor, if you will.
But there’s also room to show your
own thoughts and feelings, to insert
yourself into the narrative.”
Oyeyemi certainly brought her
own experience and wild imagination to bear in Boy, Snow, Bird,
which examines the trope of the notorious evil stepmother—but with a
racial twist.
The novel begins in 1953 when
the beautiful, troubled Boy Novak
leaves her abusive father (a snarling, wild-eyed “rat-catcher”) for a
small town in Massachusetts. There,
she meets and marries a handsome
widower, Arturo Whitman, whose
daughter Snow is indisputably
beautiful—the fairest in the land, if
you will. As if Snow’s looks weren’t
trouble enough, Boy soon gives
birth to her own daughter, Bird,
who is shockingly dark-skinned.
Thus is uncovered the Whitmans’
deep, dark secret: They are a family
of light-skinned blacks desperately
trying to pass as white. Once this
shame has been revealed, Boy banishes one child, while embracing
the other—and all three characters
are forced to confront their own
identities.
What’s interesting though, is how
unfixed the concept of identity becomes over the course of the book.
Not only are characters repeatedly
miscategorized (by race, by gender)
and misnamed (“Boy” is a girl, the
Whitmans are not “white men”),
some of them aren’t even positive
they actually exist. How else could
Snow and Bird explain the fact that
they generally don’t show up in
mirrors? Or the fact that neither can
recall meeting the other in person?
Even Boy’s father, the abusive ratcatcher, isn’t what he initially seems,
revealing himself to be neither com-

pletely bad, nor exactly Boy’s father.
If all this sounds confusing, fear
not. As with her earlier novels,
Oyeyemi’s prose can be cyclical
and demanding—she’ll never be
the type to spoon-feed takeaways
or wrap things up in a pretty bow—
but she’s also never out to full-on
befuddle. If anything, she aims to
please.
“I just want readers to care
enough to turn the page,” she
admits. In other words, she writes
characters who may be complex,
but are both relatable and sympathetic.
Oyeyemi has particular sympathy
for one type of literary scapegoat:
the archetypical wicked stepmother, whom she firmly believes
gets an unfairly bad rap. “Wicked
stepmothers disrupt the values of
a story in a way that interests me,”
she says. “They disrupt the notion
that a woman should be dutiful
or beautiful or sweetly tempered,
and in that way, they become real

people. In fact, the fairy-tale villain
or wicked stepmother has a spark
for life that a character like Snow
White just will never have.”
OK, you might concede, so maybe
Snow White is a little boring. But
surely Oyeyemi can’t deny her fundamental goodness, right? Wrong.
“To be honest,” she says, “I’ve
always found Snow White to be
quite menacing. She was always so
placid and just accepted everything
terrible that happened without any
anger. I mean, she’s been thrown
out of her home. She’s frightened.
She has to go and live with these
weird dwarves. And yet . . . she’s just
this complacent blank slate. I find
that much more terrifying than her
wicked stepmother.”
Such irreverence is fundamental
to Boy, Snow, Bird which, it’s worth
noting, is often surreally funny;
Even the nastiest characters have
moments of levity (the rat-catcher
certainly plays for laughs), and
particularly harrowing scenes are

tinged with lightness—as when a
thick clump of hair is found in the
cranberry sauce during an emotionally fraught Thanksgiving dinner.
But overall, Oyeyemi’s irreverence
serves to disrupt fairy-tale convention, which typically relies on strict
black-and-white dichotomy. No
character, she seems to say, can be
defined by race or gender, let alone
moral good or evil.
“Sure, it’s easier if you stick to
absolutes,” she admits. “This is a
man. This is a woman. This is what
a white person does. This is what
a black person does. This is what a
black person looks like. This is what
a white person
looks like. And
Oyeyemi has so on. But what
particular
I wanted to
do was create
sympathy
characters who
for one type
connect on
other levels, who
of literary
overcome the
scapegoat:
obstacles that
the wicked
might otherwise
make them
stepmother,
enemies.”
whom she
Another absobelieves gets lute that drives
Oyeyemi crazy
a bad rap.
is the concept
of “happily ever
after” or “closure,” both of which
she resists in Boy, Snow, Bird. “What
does ‘closure’ even mean?” she
demands, laughing. “I don’t know if
I should confess this, but I’ve been
obsessed with this TV show called
‘Pretty Little Liars,’ and every episode it seems like somebody needs
‘closure.’ What psychobabble!”
Then, with a hint of mischief: “The
only real closure is death, right?”
This interplay between the funny
and the grim, the refreshing banal
and the fantastically unknowable
is perhaps what makes Oyeyemi so
likeable—both as a person and as a
writer. She’s wise beyond her years,
but never pompous or intimidating.
She gushes about Lydia Davis’ new
short story collection, but also admits to crying during trashy airplane
movies. And then of course there’s
her fiction, which is at times difficult
and dense, but always full of humor,
joy and good old-fashioned plotting.
About this balance, Oyeyemi is
remarkably humble. “The things
I write are so disobedient. I never
know what they’ll turn out to be.”
OK, fine. But in that case: She’s
one darn good disciplinarian.

BIG IDEAS

SIMPLY

EXPLAINED

For students, families, or anyone interested in a concise,
thought-provoking refresher on a single subject.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas discovers two skeletons wrapped in plastic during a New York
City building’s demolition. By the time
she’s done with the crime scene, there are
12 murders to be solved.

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The Museum of
Extraordinary Things

Night Broken

By Alice Hoffman

An unexpected phone call brings a new
challenge for Mercy Thompson. Her mate
Adam’s ex-wife is in trouble, but she can’t
shake the feeling that something about the
situation isn’t right.

Hoffman’s latest novel is the story of an
electric and impassioned young love between two vastly different souls in New York
City, during the volatile first decades of the
20th century.

By Patricia Briggs

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The Troop

The Accident

By Nick Cutter

By Chris Pavone

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs
leads a troop of boys into the Canadian
wilderness for a weekend camping trip. But
something strange is in the air this year.

Over the course of one long and increasingly perilous day, three lives collide as a
mysterious book titled The Accident begins
its dangerous march toward publication.

Retail Price: $26 | With Discount Card: $23.40

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Power Play

I’ve Got You Under My Skin

By Danielle Steel

By Mary Higgins Clark

Two successful CEOs are both indispensable to their growing companies’ futures,
but their world comes at a high price. What
price are they willing to pay? Who are they
willing to sacrifice to stay on top? Those
they love, or themselves?

Laurie and her TV crew are producing
a new “cold case” series. Revisiting unsolved crimes one at a time, she will gather
victims’ friends and family who have lived
under suspicion of guilt and want a chance
to clear their names. On sale April 1.

Retail Price: $28 | With Discount Card: $25.20

Retail Price: $26.99 | With Discount Card: $24.29

The King

Bone Deep

By J.R. Ward

By Randy Wayne White

After turning his back on the throne for
centuries, Wrath, son of Wrath, finally assumed his father’s mantle. But as the war
rages on, he is forced to make choices that
put everything at risk. On sale April 1.

Doc Ford and Tomlinson are on a mission
to help recover a relic stolen from a tribe
of Crow Indians. Their search involves a
ruthless subculture of black-marketers and
a multibillion-dollar phosphate industry.

Retail Price: $27.95 | With Discount Card: $25.15

Retail Price: $26.95 | With Discount Card: $24.25

THE IT LIST: New & Notable
BESTSELLERS
The Bootlegger
By Clive Cussler & Justin Scott

F A I T H & F A M I LY
KJV Study Bible

In 1920, both Prohibition and bootlegging
are in full swing. When Isaac Bell’s boss and
lifelong friend is shot during the chase of
a rum-running vessel, Bell swears revenge,
but these are no ordinary criminals.

Women, find the Bible study help you
need in a package you’ll love! This edition
is an excellent resource for personal study,
whether you’re already a fan of the translation or you’ve been reading more modern
Bible versions.

Retail Price: $27.95 | With Discount Card: $25.15

Retail Price: $47.99 | With Discount Card: $43.19

A King’s Ransom

KJV Heritage Study Bible

By Sharon Kay Penman
This long-anticipated sequel to the national
bestseller Lionheart is a vivid and heartwrenching story of the last years in the life
of Richard, Coeur de Lion.

Featuring more than 6,500 notes from the
Layman’s Bible Commentary Series, this
handsomely bound study Bible will help you
understand the King James Version.
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The Bible Promise Book,
Vest Pocket Edition
Where do you turn when you need God’s
thoughts on the issues and emotions of life?
To this handy guide, now in a great new vest
pocket edition.
Retail Price: $5 | With Discount Card: $4.50

Robert Ludlum’s
The Janson Option
By Paul Garrison
Paul Janson is known for deadly speed and
accuracy. Sickened by the “sanctioned serial
killings” ordered by the State Department,
Janson now only takes assignments that he
believes will lead to the greater good.

Devotions for the Beach
Dig your feet in the sand and let the water
cool your toes as you escape into the beauty
of God’s seaside creations, and hear His
voice more clearly than perhaps anywhere
else.
Retail Price: $12.99 | With Discount Card: $11.69

Retail Price: $28 | With Discount Card: $25.20

Don’t Go
By Lisa Scottoline
Best-selling author Lisa Scottoline breaks
new ground and delivers the story of a
soldier who discovers what it means to be a
man, a father and, ultimately, a hero.
Retail Price: $15.99 | With Discount Card: $14.39

My Gentle Barn
By Ellie Laks
Laks tells the story of The Gentle Barn, an
extraordinary nonprofit that brings together a volunteer staff of community members
and at-risk teens to rehabilitate abandoned
and abused animals.
Retail Price: $25 | With Discount Card: $22.50

THE IT LIST: New & Notable
JGURSATP H
FO
I DVSE L S
I CR NK O
Black Bird, Volume 18
By Kanoko Sakurakouji
Misao Harada is one of the special few who
can see the world of myth and magic that
intersects ours. In this series’ final installment, discover the heartrending conclusion
of this supernatural love story.

Alice in the Country
of Clover: March Hare
By Quin Rose & Mamenosuke Fujimaru
Alice goes deeper down the rabbit hole, but
can she truly find love for Elliot March, the
second in command of Wonderland’s mafia?
Retail Price: $13.99 | With Discount Card: $12.59

Retail Price: $9.99 | With Discount Card: $8.99

One Piece, Volume 70
By Eiichiro Oda
The battle on Punk Hazard heats up as
Luffy faces off against the diabolical Caesar
Clown. Meanwhile, can the rest of the Straw
Hat crew escape the deadly gas that is
spreading all over the island?

Adventure Time Vol. 3
By Danielle Corsetto & Zachary
Sterling
Join Finn the human and Jake the dog as
they go on an adventure of a lifetime!
Retail Price: $11.99 | With Discount Card: $10.79

Retail Price: $9.99 | With Discount Card: $8.99

Blue Exorcist, Volume 11
By Kazue Kato
Rin seems to be learning to control his power more, but is tapping his inner demonic
fire going to be his salvation or his doom?
Retail Price: $9.99 | With Discount Card: $8.99

Ranma 1/2, Vol. 1 & 2
By Rumiko Takahashi
One day, teenaged martial artist Ranma
Saotome went on a training mission with
his father and ended up taking a dive into a
cursed spring. Now, every time he’s splashed
with cold water, he changes into a girl.

From politics to the personal, from fashion to
food, from the campus to the locker room, the
desire to be cool has infected all aspects of our
lives. At its worst, it is deadly, on a massive scale.
Retail Price: $26 | With Discount Card: $23.40

Riddick
When Riddick lands on an inhospitable
alien planet, his struggle for survival becomes dire when he inadvertently leads a
group of assassins straight to him.

A Call to Action
By Jimmy Carter
The world’s discrimination and violence against
women and girls is the most serious, pervasive
and ignored violation of basic human rights: This
is President Jimmy Carter’s call to action.
Retail Price: $28 | With Discount Card: $25.20

I’ll See You Again
By Jackie Hance with Janice Kaplan
Hance’s memoir chronicles her grief after a
horrific car accident took the lives of her three
young daughters.
Retail Price: $16 | With Discount Card: $14.40

Falling in Love
with America Again
By Jim DeMint
CEO of The Heritage Foundation, DeMint has
traveled the country talking to Americans about
how to return to our founding principles and
restore and protect our economy and culture for
future generations.
Retail Price: $25 | With Discount Card: $22.50

Pete Rose:
An American Dilemma
By Kostya Kennedy
This is a fascinating re-examination of Rose’s
life: from his cocky and charismatic early years
through his storied playing career, to his bitter
war against baseball’s hierarchy.
Retail Price: $26.95 | With Discount Card: $24.25

THE IT LIST: New & Notable
HISTORY
The Girls of Atomic City

Astoria

By Denise Kiernan

By Peter Stark

This is the incredible true story of the topsecret town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and
the young women brought there unknowingly to help build the atomic bomb.

Unfolding from 1810 to 1813, this is the
harrowing tale of the quest to settle a
Jamestown-like colony on the Pacific coast.
Retail Price: $27.99 | With Discount Card: $25.19

Retail Price: $16 | With Discount Card: $14.40

The Age of Radiance
By Craig Nelson
From the best-selling author of Rocket Men
comes the first complete history of the
Atomic Age—a brilliant, magisterial account
of the men and women who uncovered the
secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to
America and ignited the 20th century.

The Plantagenets
By Dan Jones
The first Plantagenet king created an empire stretching from Scotland to Jerusalem.
In this epic history, Jones vividly resurrects
this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and
its mythic world.
Retail Price: $18 | With Discount Card: $16.20

Retail Price: $29.99 | With Discount Card: $26.99

Savage Harvest
By Carl Hoffman
The mysterious disappearance of Michael
Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961 has kept
the world guessing for years. Now, Hoffman
uncovers startling new evidence that finally
tells the full, astonishing story.

Firearms:
An Illustrated History
This detailed catalog profiles more than 300
firearms spanning 700 years and includes
intricate charts and photographic features.
Retail Price: $40 | With Discount Card: $36

Retail Price: $26.99 | With Discount Card: $24.29

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
American Spartan
By Ann Scott Tyson

The Promise of a Pencil

This is a true story of love, war, heroism
and heartbreak in Afghanistan written by a
veteran war correspondent.

By Adam Braun

Retail Price: $27.99 | With Discount Card: $25.19

Braun chronicles his journey through more
50 countries to find his calling—but every
person can take steps to ignite passion and
potential.
Retail Price: $25 | With Discount Card: $22.50

The Sleepwalkers

The Rise

By Christopher Clark

By Sarah Lewis

Meticulously researched and masterfully
written, Clark offers a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent
into World War I—a war that tore the world
apart.

This soulful celebration of the determination and courage of the human spirit makes
the case that many of our greatest triumphs
come from understanding the importance
of failure.

Retail Price: $18.99 | With Discount Card: $17.09

Retail Price: $26 | With Discount Card: $23.40

THE IT LIST: New & Notable
FOR KIDS & TEENS
Minecraft: Redstone Handbook
Redstone experts guide you through all aspects
of working with Redstone in “Minecraft.” This
handbook also includes exclusive tips from
the game creator, Notch, and some of the most
extraordinary Redstone creations ever made.

Mockingjay
By Suzanne Collins
The third book in Collins’ phenomenal and
worldwide best-selling Hunger Games trilogy is now available in paperback!

By Kate Egan
With never-before-seen photos, interviews
with cast and crew and exclusive extras, this
oversize volume is a true behind-the-scenes
look at the filming of Divergent.
Retail Price: $17.99 | With Discount Card: $16.19

Divergent Movie
Tie-in Edition
By Veronica Roth
This special edition of the first book in
Roth’s best-selling trilogy features cover
artwork from the major motion picture starring Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet.
Retail Price: $9.99 | With Discount Card: $8.99

Pete the Cat:
Big Easter Adventure

Nevermore

By James & Kimberly Dean

In this moving finale to Patterson’s epic fantasy series, fans will finally get the answers
they’ve been waiting for—with an ending
full of shock, surprises and the greatest
conclusion you never saw coming.

Tella becomes a contender in the Brimstone
Bleed to win a cure for her sick brother. The
jungle is terrifying, the clock is ticking, and she
can’t trust her allies. One big question emerges:
Why have so many fallen sick in the first place?

Nielsen takes readers on an extraordinary
journey in this final installment of the bestselling Ascendance Trilogy.

Retail Price: $17.99 | With Discount Card: $16.19

Retail Price: $17.99 | With Discount Card: $16.19

Visit www.booksamillion.com/bookclubs for up-to-date reading guides.

THIS MONTH’S PICKS

original
Reconstructing Amelia By Kimberly McCreight
Kate is torn from a business meeting by a call from her daughter’s posh
private school: Amelia has been suspended. Kate’s stress turns to panic
when she finds the school surrounded by emergency personnel.
Retail Price: $15.99 | With Discount Card: $14.39

faithpoint
Prepared for a Purpose
By Antoinette Tuff with Alex Tresniowski
As the nation faced yet another story of a school tragedy, one courageous
woman rewrote the ending.

NEXT MONTH
The Supremes at Earl’s
All-You-Can-Eat
By Edward Kelsey Moore
Moving back and forth between past
and present, the novel orbits around
Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat diner, the first
black-owned business in Indiana.

Retail Price: $15 | With Discount Card: $13.50

The Son
By Philipp Meyer
This stunning second novel is an epic
of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land
and oil that follows the rise of one
unforgettable Texas family.

Retail Price: $16.99 | With Discount Card: $15.29

Mere Christianity
By C. S. Lewis
In this enduring classic, one of the most
important writers of the 20th century
explores the common ground upon which
all of those of the Christian faith stand
together.

C

M

Y

CM

MY

Retail Price: $14.99 | With Discount Card: $13.49

Retail Price: $24.99 | With Discount Card: $22.49

CY

CMY

nonfiction
The Happiness Project By Gretchen Rubin
Rubin chronicles her adventures during the 12 months she spent testdriving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research and lessons
from popular culture about how to be happier.
Retail Price: $14.99 | With Discount Card: $13.49

teen
Perfect By Ellen Hopkins
Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather
be. For four high school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.
Retail Price: $11.99 | With Discount Card: $10.79

The Power of Habit
By Charles Duhigg
New York Times business reporter
Duhigg takes readers to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that
explain why habits exist and how they
can be changed.

Retail Price: $16 | With Discount Card: $14.40

An Abundance
of Katherines
By John Green
When it comes to relationships, Colin
Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine.
And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped.

Retail Price: $9.99 | With Discount Card: $8.99

Beyonders:
A World Without Heroes
By Brandon Mull
Jason Walker wished his life could be a
bit less predictable—until a day at the
zoo ends with Jason suddenly transporting from the hippo tank.

Retail Price: $7.99 | With Discount Card: $7.19

K

NOOK Simple Touch
with GlowLight
TM

ONLY
ONLY

79

32
32 GB
GB ONLY
ONLY

179

TM

features

CHRISTIAN FICTION
BY MELISSA BROWN

Forging ahead, finding your faith

F

ailure and sin, redemption and healing form the backbone of these five novels, much as they do in the Bible
that inspires writers of Christian fiction. From thrilling mystery and longed-for relationships to tests of will
and heart, these works of fiction highlight God’s grace to man—who desperately needs it.

In Billy Coffey’s The Devil
Walks in Mattingly (Thomas
Nelson, $15.99, 400 pages, ISBN
9781401688226), past misdeeds
haunt a husband and wife in a way
that blurs the line between the real
world and something beyond. The
sleepy town of Mattingly, Virginia,
recalls Flannery O’Connor with its
glimpses of the grotesque and supernatural. In this small town—prone to
gossip and an inability to let bygones
be bygones—the past and the present collide when heinous crimes are
committed and an evil is let loose.
Coffey introduces his readers
to Jake and Kate Barnett and their
shared demons, centered on a boy
named Philip McBride. A third party,
a shadowy figure named Taylor,
emerges broken from the backwoods
that have borne witness to the whole
shameful story. Soon the events of
20 years ago press their weight on
Kate, Jake and Taylor, and sweep new
victims into the arc of pain.
The story unwinds slowly and
with a convincing voice that draws
the reader deep into the unexplainable. The evil that wreaks havoc on
Mattingly shakes many out of their
stupor and awakens them to the
possibility of forgiveness. Extricating themselves from the darkness of
the past will mean bravely forging
headlong into it.

FOLLOW YOUR CONSCIENCE

24

“It’s Andersonville. Men die for no
meaning.” Such is the overwhelming
impression felt while reading Tracy
Groot’s The Sentinels of Andersonville (Tyndale House, $24.99, 368
pages, ISBN 9781414359489), which
focuses on the evils both within
and without the infamous Civil War
prison. Yankee soldiers died by the
thousands in squalid conditions
that Groot describes with a deft accuracy, interspersed with historical
accounts and journal entries from
men who died and men who lived.
A privileged but well-meaning
Southern belle named Violet Stiles
discovers the shocking abuses at
Andersonville. Aided by a possible
suitor named Dance Pickett and a

Rebel soldier named Emery Jones,
who had to deliver his newfound
Yankee friend to the prison, they
form a society to bring the horrors
to light. Their hometown of Americus, Georgia, is not far from Andersonville, but its residents wish to
remain removed from the goings-on
there, even when confronted with
the sad reality. Groot ably captures
the despair of prisoners and soldiers
alike, as well as the divided emotions of the Southern townsfolk,
who have lost sons to the cause and
hate the Yankees but want to be
“good Christians.” When told of the
appalling cesspool that is Andersonville, many won’t believe, others
believe but won’t act, and still more
focus only on the technicalities and
red tape involved. Groot truthfully
renders the struggle between patriotism and Christ’s call to help the suffering regardless of their affiliation.

THE CALL OF THE PRAIRIE
As in her previous “prairie romances,” Janette Oke highlights
the timidity as well as the growing
perseverance of a young protagonist making her way in the rough
world. For Where Courage Calls
(Bethany House, $14.99, 336 pages,
ISBN 9780764212314), Oke shares
the authorial role with her daughter,
Laurel Oke Logan, and the two relate
a tale that is as much about family
relationships (those born and those
made) as it is about faith.
Elizabeth “Beth” Thatcher has
embarked on a journey to teach
school in the Canadian mining town
of Coal Valley, far from the shelter
and comfort of her family home.
The story reads like Beth’s journal
as she encounters obstacles in her
new community—having all her
belongings stolen at the train station, being treated as an outsider,
struggling with illness and uncovering the threat hidden in the woods
around her new home. Her growing
love for the children she teaches as
well as the town’s maligned Italian
immigrant workers fuels her to meet
the many challenges of frontier
life. Eventually her mistakes give

way to truly following the call of
Christ as she endeavors to improve
her pupils’ lives. Readers of Oke’s
previous books, which include
the best-selling Love Comes Softly
series, will find much to enjoy in this
new novel, filled with her familiar
balance of just the right amount of
romance and mystery.

VIRTUAL SEDUCTION
What if you could create your
perfect friend? One who literally was
always available? That’s the driving
question behind John Faubion’s suspenseful tale of the seductive power
of technology, Friend Me (Howard
Books, $14.99, 368 pages, ISBN
9781476738727). The fictional Virtual
Friend Me software takes email or
social networking sites and goes one
better: allowing users to create the
friend or companion they seek.
Scott and Rachel Douglas, parents
of two, succumb to the software’s
promise. Given her husband’s long
hours at work, Rachel needs someone she can talk to, so she re-creates
the best friend she lost to cancer.
Scott sees what the intriguing new
software offers his wife, and, in a lifealtering decision, chooses to create a
female friend. Unsurprisingly, things
take an intimate turn. Little do
Rachel and Scott know that Melissa
Montalvo, the woman behind the
cutting-edge software, has taken a
personal interest in the couple. Convinced that Scott is the perfect man
for her, the unhinged Melissa begins
a systematic effort to break them up
by any means.
The twists here are numerous,
and the revealed details of Melissa’s
backstory grow more disturbing.
Though the characters are somewhat sketchily
drawn, their dissatisfaction and
mistakes lead
them plausibly
down a very
wrong road. Will
they be able to
change course
before it’s too
late?

NO SIMPLE DEATH
Amber Wright runs the Amish Artisan Village in Middlebury, Indiana,
a collection of shops where people
come to admire a simpler way of
life, buy handicrafts and enjoy the
unique culture, charm and cooking.
It is not a place where people die
mysteriously. Yet as Murder Simply
Brewed (Zondervan, $15.99, 368
pages, ISBN 9780310326168) opens,
one of her store owners, Ethan, dies
in a way that is ruled natural at first.
Until, that is, odd and threatening
events occur and curious clues start
piling up. Prophetic verses from the
book of Daniel are found scrawled
in blood-red paint, along with other
offerings meant to frighten.
To uncover the truth, Amber and
her begrudging, widowed neighbor,
Tate, follow the trail. Soon, everyone
from the man’s wife to his co-workers and mentally unstable sister
becomes a suspect. Vannetta Chapman keeps the action suspenseful, and the who-done-it mostly
unpredictable as her Amish and
English characters work together to
solve the mystery. Out of even such
dreadful circumstances come moments of grace: between Amber and
her Amish employee Hannah and
between Amber and Tate, who had
each given up on love.

WOMEN’S HISTORY
BY JULIE HALE

Celebrating the accomplishments of fearless females

T

he past is packed with remarkable women whose achievements deserve special
recognition. Just in time for Women’s History Month, three new books provide
in-depth looks at a few of the courageous, far-sighted women who served as
early champions of change. Inspiring narratives about friendship, kinship and the
quest for equality, these compelling books salute a group of winning women who were
ahead of their time.
Frederick Douglass). With the assistance of millionaire magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, Tennie’s reputed
lover, the sisters launched the first
female-owned brokerage firm. Their
taste for controversy and ultra-pro-

indomitable will made her an early
model of change for women.
Bright, well read and remarkably
beautiful, Elizabeth Patterson—
known as Betsy—came from a wellto-do Baltimore family. When the
dashing Jérôme Bonaparte,
Napoleon’s spoiled younger
brother, arrived in Baltimore
and made her acquaintance,
he was smitten. The pair wed
in 1803, and their union drew
the attention of the American
government while scandalizing Napoleon, who blocked
Betsy’s entry at ports throughout Europe. To Jérôme, the
French emperor issued an
ultimatum: Give up Betsy
or relinquish the Bonaparte
fortune.
Jérôme, of course, caved.
Betsy, who bore him a son,
took a defiant stance in the
wake of his betrayal, forging
a life for herself that did not
include the refuge of another
marriage. Thanks to her beauty and intellect, she shone in
Mathew Brady portraits of free-thinking sisters Victoria Woodhull (left) and Tennessee European society and spent
many years overseas. She also
“Tennie” Claflin, who never shied away from challenging the conventions of their era. set herself up handsomely
through investments and
profits from Baltimore real estate.
gressive attitudes (tenacious Tennie
Woodhull and Tennessee “Tennie”
Through it all, she remained proud
Claflin, free-thinking feminist sisters proposed that women be trained
of the Bonaparte name.
for army combat) were frowned
who took New York City by storm in
Berkin, a historian and the acupon by more reserved feminists,
the 1860s by fearlessly addressing
claimed author of Revolutionary
but they remained steadfast in their
the taboos of the time. They were
Mothers and Civil War Wives, brings
desire for reform. MacPherson, an
proponents of free love, suffrage,
sex education and labor reform, and award-winning journalist, takes
they stumped for their causes brave- a theatrical approach to these
radical proceedings. She provides
ly. Originally from rural Ohio, where
a cast of characters and unfolds
their father, a snake-oil salesman,
used them in his act, the sisters were the sisters’ story over the course
of five irresistible “acts.” This is a
a canny and intelligent pair, both
grand tale presented on a grand
strikingly handsome and unfazed
scale.
by public scrutiny. They never shied
from a scandal. Their accusations
A SAVVY SISTER-IN-LAW
of infidelity against minister Henry
Ward Beecher nearly trumped the
Carol Berkin’s Wondrous
Civil War for press coverage.
Beauty: The Life and Adventures
The duo’s accomplishments
of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte
are astonishing: Victoria was the
(Knopf, $27.95, 256 pages, ISBN
first woman to make a bid for the
9780307592781) features a heroine
presidency (her running mate was
whose fierce independence and
Sensational in every sense of the
word, The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded
Age (Twelve, $28, 432 pages, ISBN
9780446570237) by Myra MacPherson looks at the lives of Victoria

a fascinating chapter of feminist history to life in a narrative that’s brisk
and vivid.

FEMINIST FAMILY TIES
Diane Jacobs explores an intriguing facet of a famous family in Dear
Abigail: The Intimate Lives and
Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail
Adams and Her Two Remarkable
Sisters (Ballantine, $28, 528 pages,
ISBN 9780345465061). In this artful
biography, Jacobs spotlights the
friendship that existed between Abigail Adams, wife of President John
Adams, and her sisters, Mary Cranch
and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, with
whom she shared progressive ideas
regarding education and gender.
The sisters came of age in the mid1700s in Weymouth, Massachusetts,
raised by a minister father and a
book-loving mother. They were a
tightly bound bunch until marriage
parted them. Avid letter writers, over
the years they produced a correspondence that was polished and
insightful, filled with wit and commentary on current events.
Drawing on their letters and
other archival materials, Jacobs has
created a well-rounded, thoroughly
readable biography of the threesome. Each sister shines in her
own way: Mary, the eldest sibling,
served as mayor of her small hamlet,
while Elizabeth, the youngest and
an ambitious writer, established
the second coeducational school
in America with the help of her
husband. Middle sister Abigail took
charge of the Adams farm while her
husband forged a path to the presidency. The sisters’ independence,
integrity and spunk shine through
Jacobs’ expertly crafted narrative,
which also provides a fresh look at
life in colonial-era America.

25

reviews
THE MUSEUM OF
EXTRAORDINARY THINGS

FICTION

Lonely souls finding their way
REVIEW BY MEGAN FISHMANN

—DEBORAH DONOVAN

Alice Hoffman’s latest novel has the word “extraordinary” in the title for
good reason: The best-selling author of The Dovekeepers has served up
another historical novel that will dazzle readers until the last page. Set in
New York City in the early 1900s, The Museum of Extraordinary Things
veers from the extravagant mansions dotting the Upper West Side to the
foul conditions of the overcrowded tenements on the Lower East Side to
the seaside apartments stretched across Coney Island to tell the interwoven stories of Coralie Sardie and Eddie Cohen.
Coralie is the only child of a once-famous French magician who now
runs The Museum of Extraordinary Things on Coney Island’s Surf Avenue.
His curiosity show—packed with acts performed by so-called “freaks and
oddities” like the Wolfman and Butterfly Girl—is being threatened by
competing attractions that are being built nearby. Coralie was born with
webbed hands, and unbeknownst to her, her father has been preparing
her to one day become part of the museum. Nightly, Coralie is submerged
By Alice Hoffman
in ice cold baths and forced to swim in the Atlantic Ocean in order to
Scribner, $27.99, 384 pages
build up her tolerance to the cold and increase the strength of her lungs
ISBN 9781451693560, audio, eBook available
for holding her breath underwater.
HISTORICAL FICTION
On the Lower East Side, Eddie Cohen—a young Orthodox Jewish man
who emigrated from Russia—has abandoned his job as a tailor, along
with his father and his faith, to pursue a career in photography. Eddie spends his time photographing the crime
beat for newspapers. As he is working the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist fire (which killed more than 100 young
female laborers), Eddie is approached by a despondent father looking for his daughter. Despite his reluctance
to get involved, Eddie finds himself agreeing to track her down. His investigation leads him to cross paths with
Coralie, and both their lives are forever changed.
In The Museum of Extraordinary Things, both characters are searching for something. Coralie is desperate
to escape from her father’s obsessive and abusive watch. Meanwhile, Eddie is attempting to make peace with
himself and the fact that he abandoned not only his father, but also his God. As the two narratives gradually
intertwine, Coralie and Eddie’s faith in both each other and themselves will be tested numerous times, only to
come to an explosive head at the end of this powerful novel.

THE ORCHARD OF LOST SOULS
By Nadifa
Mohamed

FSG
$26, 352 pages
ISBN 9780374209148
eBook available

WORLD FICTION

26

Hargeisa, Somalia, was balanced
on a fragile precipice in the fall of
1987—held in the grip of a powerful
dictatorship, with signs of revolution
emerging with ever-increasing frequency. Nadifa Mohamed’s moving,
thought-provoking second novel,
following Black Mamba Boy (2010),
focuses on three female characters
caught up in the maelstrom whose
lives intersect in unforgettable ways.

Deqo is a young orphan girl who
has come to Hargeisa from the local
refugee camp. She is drawn to the
relative safety of the city, where she
sleeps in a barrel under a bridge,
thus escaping the notice of the
Guddi, the neighborhood watch
group that supports the regime. The
clothes she wears she has “grabbed
from the wind . . . items that ghosts
have left behind.” In return for her
first pair of shoes, she signs up to
dance in a pro-government rally to
be held in Hargeisa’s stadium.
Also at the stadium that day is
Kawsar, a widow in her late 50s who
comes to the rally with friends—
all forced to attend by the Guddi,
though none supports the regime.
When Kawsar sees Deqo being punished for not following the Guddi’s
precise directions, she steps in to
defend the girl—and their wrath
then turns on her. Deqo manages

Mohamed and her family left
Somalia in 1986, the year before
the outbreak of the civil war about
which she writes so eloquently. The
story she has fashioned around
these three resilient characters and
how they survive is one that will
resonate with readers for a long
time.

to escape, but Kawsar is hauled off
to the police station and placed in a
group cell. Instead of being released
after a brief interrogation, as she
anticipates, Kawsar has the misfortune of confronting Filsan, a fervent
young female soldier relocated to
Hargeisa from Mogadishu to help
suppress the growing rebellion. Filsan takes out her dissatisfaction on
Kawsar, whom she first questions,
then savagely beats “like a disobedient donkey.”
With a broken hip and pelvis,
Kawsar is confined to her bed,
unable to join her friends, who
are preparing to leave the country
before war breaks out. Deqo is still
in hiding nearby and Filsan, who
has become disillusioned with the
military and its tactics, looks for a
chance to escape the disintegration
of her world that she know is fast
approaching.

THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD
By Laura McHugh

Spiegel & Grau
$26, 320 pages
ISBN 9780812995206
eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

Let’s get one thing straight: With
The Weight of Blood, it’s clear that
Laura McHugh is more than a
pretender to the throne of the “rural
noir” genre. If her dazzling and disturbing debut novel is anything to
go by, she’s got her eye on the crown
and has more than the necessary
talent and skills to nab it for herself.
Daniel Woodrell had better watch
his back.
Lucy Dane has lived in Henbane
all 17 years of her life, but she is
ostracized by many of the town’s
locals because of malicious rumors
surrounding her mother, an exotic
and bewitching outsider who disappeared without a trace when Lucy
was just a baby. So when Lucy’s
friend, Cheri, is found murdered,
Lucy finds that the loss dredges up
many of the long-buried questions
about the day her mother wandered
into Old Scratch Cavern with a
pistol in hand and was never seen
again. As Lucy digs deeper into
what happened to Cheri, she begins
uprooting the tenuous foundation
of her own life—and discovers that
some things may be better left lost.
The Weight of Blood is a tense,
taut novel and a truly remarkable
debut. McHugh, who moved to the
Ozarks with her family as a preteen,
elegantly interweaves the stories of
Lucy and her mother, Lila, shifting
between narratives to delicately
ratchet up the tension and ensnare
her audience, like a sly spider crafting a beautiful but deadly web. The
pacing is swift, the writing redolent,
and McHugh is not afraid to burrow

FICTION
into some very dark territory—readers will gasp in a mixture of surprise,
horror and delight as pieces of her
gruesome puzzle begin to slide into
place. The Weight of Blood rewards
its readers with a suspenseful thrill
ride that satisfies in all the right
ways.
—STEPHENIE HARRISON

Visit BookPage.com for a
Q&A with Laura McHugh.

A BURNABLE BOOK
By Bruce
Holsinger

Morrow
$25.99, 464 pages
ISBN 9780062240323
Audio, eBook available

HISTORICAL FICTION

The term “Middle Ages” contains
a prejudice: that the era was merely
an unremarkable void straddling
antiquity and modernity. Recent
scholarship has eroded this perception. The era produced Dante,
Chaucer and Boccaccio as well as
significant leaps in mathematics
and even algorithms and cryptography. It was, moreover, a time when
the lust for life was great and the
powerful had lust aplenty. Bruce
Holsinger’s captivating historical
novel A Burnable Book is testimony
to this more accurate view of a fascinating period.
The scene is London in 1385.
Reigning over England is Richard
II, later to adorn one of Shakespeare’s plays. The church is divided
between Rome and Avignon while
England hangs in the balance. A
book, the “burnable” one of the title,
appears, allegedly written during
the reign of William the Conqueror.
The book prophesies in historically
accurate terms the death of every
English king from William to Richard. Thus it falls to the book’s many
temporary owners to decipher that
prophecy and save, or not save, the
reigning monarch.
But the true authorship of the
book remains mysterious. Is it
Chaucer, soon to write his Canterbury Tales? Is it Lollius, to whom the
Roman poet Horace addressed one
of his odes? Or is it the son of the
novel’s narrator, who chews the fat

with Chaucer and does some sleuthing of his own, even slinking into the
brothels to ask prostitutes pointed
questions? Thus the novel careens
from court to academia, from house
of God to house of ill repute, with
scandalous overlap between the
latter two.
The novel’s action proceeds at a
steady clip and has the stench of
authenticity, detailing everything
from methods of torture to the
happy custom of throwing refuse
into the street. Its prose is erudite
and focused, reading more like an
academic thriller than a frilly period
piece: John Grisham meets Umberto
Eco. And Holsinger has clearly ventured to imbue his writing with the
earthy English words that Orwell,
among others, favored over their
highfalutin’ Latinate counterparts.
The language is also often bawdy, as
befits a novel about bawds.
In his own book about England,
Paul Theroux argued that England
had been written about perhaps
more than any other country, but
the England he meant was likely
that of Dickens, Austen or Hardy.
About medieval England we know
almost nil. This clever novel, as
contemporary as it is distant, helps
illuminate an England consigned for
ages to a stagnant darkness.
—KENNETH CHAMPEON

THE WIVES OF LOS ALAMOS
By TaraShea
Nesbit

Bloomsbury
$25, 240 pages
ISBN 9781620405031
Audio, eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

in the harsh climate and secretive
environment of Los Alamos.
The Wives of Los Alamos is written in the first person plural (“we”),
a surprisingly effective choice by
Nesbit. It helps paint the picture of
a generation of women who, while
diverse in many ways, were still
products of their time, following
their husbands virtually without
question.
“What did we think our husbands
were doing in the lab?” Nesbit
writes. “We suspected, because the
military was involved, that they were
building a communication device,
a rocket, or a new weapon. We ruled
out submarines because we were in
the desert—but we closely considered types of code breaking.”
The conditions were stark: a
dusty, windy, mysterious military
base where food was rationed
and showers were a luxury. Some
families buckled under the harsh
conditions. Yet Nesbit shows that
the women found ways to adapt and
even have fun, with morning neighborhood coffees and evening dances
giving shape to their social lives.
“We felt the freedom of living in
isolation,” she writes, “and so, on
the weekends, fenced in as we were,
we celebrated and square-danced,
we let go. We often work the next
morning with no water and spent
the day reeking of rum, and our
lungs burned from smoking so
many cigarettes. We wanted what
we could many times not have: coffee, a shower.”
Nesbit made use of oral histories
and archival documents to detail
for the first time the lives of these
young women who until now were
forgotten in the history books. It is
a stunningly original and thoughtprovoking debut novel.

Novel

R
eADS
from

Avon Romance

—AMY SCRIBNER

The women came from all over
the nation—even the world—with
little or no idea why they were moving to a remote New Mexico town
with only a post office box for an
address. They were the wives of scientists working at a secret research
laboratory to build the first atomic
bomb.
The Manhattan Project is a storied
chapter in American history, its
products used in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Less well recorded are the
voices of the women who lived there
in the early 1940s, raising families
and struggling to build a community

ALL OUR NAMES
By Dinaw
Mengestu

Knopf
$25.95, 272 pages
ISBN 9780385349987
eBook available

WORLD FICTION

Dinaw Mengestu’s third novel
skillfully blends two disparate narratives—the account of an African

AvonRomAnce.com

27

reviews

28

revolution and the story of a survivor’s new life in America—to create
a moving portrait of the dilemma of
identity.
All Our Names is set in the 1970s,
in the early days of Idi Amin’s repressive reign in Uganda. An unnamed
narrator, a young man who dreams
of becoming a writer, crosses the
border from his native Ethiopia and
meets Isaac, his contemporary from
the slums of Kampala. The two “became friends the way two stray dogs
find themselves linked by treading
the same path every day in search
of food and companionship.” They
spend their days at the capital’s university campus and watch as what
begin as almost playful protests,
chief among them what the narrator
calls their “paper revolution,” spark
brutal retaliation from government
thugs. Soon, the idealism of the
uprising curdles into violence, with
Isaac assuming a prominent role in
the anti-government force.
In chapters that alternate with
that account,
Helen, a social
Mengestu
worker in a
small Midwestexposes our
ern college
very human town, provides
inability to
the novel’s
other narrative
truly know
voice. The man
even those
she knows as
closest to us. Isaac has escaped from the
African turmoil,
bearing scars both physical and psychic. Helen quickly is transformed
from his “chaperone into Middle
America” into his lover, but the
bigotry of the times compels them
to conceal their interracial relationship. Despite their intimacy, Helen is
haunted by her inability to penetrate
to the core of Isaac’s being.
That unease is only one manifestation of the conflicting impulses
that seem to define these characters. How is Isaac transformed from
prankster to hardened revolutionary, someone “trying to end the
nightmare this nation has become”?
The narrator, who “came for the
writers and stayed for the war” finds
“the difference wasn’t as great as I
would have thought,” and yet he
vacillates between detachment and
active, if reluctant, participation
in the revolt. Helen, who still lives
with her mother at age 30, struggles
to resolve the tension between her
small-town roots and the exoti-

FICTION
cism of her affair with a man from
an alien culture whose past is
veiled from her. In each instance,
Mengestu’s unadorned prose hints
at, rather than discloses, the secrets
each of his characters harbors. But
it’s in their mystery that he exposes a
persistent fact of our existence—our
inability to truly know even those
closest to us.
—HARVEY FREEDENBERG

VISIBLE CITY
By Tova Mirvis

HMH
$24, 256 pages
ISBN 9780544047747
Audio, ebook available

FICTION

If we’re all stars in the stories of
our own lives, then the people we
pass on the street, in the elevator
or in the park are extras. And when
those stories are lived out in the
apartments, coffee shops and streets
of New York City, there are an awful
lot of extras. Although New York residents often feel anonymous among
the city’s millions, proximity means
their lives repeatedly brush against
one another’s.
That proves to be the case in Visible City, the charming new novel
by best-selling writer Tova Mirvis
(The Ladies Auxiliary, The Outside
World). Nina, a mother of two and
a former attorney, often checks out
of her own story and into those of
others by observing a couple whose
apartment is visible from her own
Upper West Side flat. The older
couple’s calm interactions enchant
her—until one evening she spots a
quarrelsome young couple in their
place. Who are these people? How
do they relate?
Nina’s curiosity is satiated after
she meets the male half of the older
couple at a neighborhood Starbucks.
And as she continues to encounter
Leon around the neighborhood, her
veil of anonymity slips away. “[I]f
you kept talking to strangers,” Leon
realizes, “eventually they became
friends.”
That friendship gradually reveals
parallels between these two families
on opposite sides of the street. Leon’s
wife, Claudia, an art professor, has

lost the motivating thirst for her
work, just as Nina has. But therapist
Leon and attorney Jeremy, Nina’s
husband, continue to hide themselves away in their occupations.
Meanwhile, Leon’s daughter Emma,
who is half of the young couple Nina
spotted, begins to babysit for Nina’s
children.
As the neighbors’ paths continue
to cross, the metaphorical walls
behind which they hide fall away.
“Even in this city of so many people,
there was no escape from the expanding web of intersections,” Leon
realizes.
In Visible City, Mirvis steps away
from the Orthodox Jewish society
that has populated her previous
work to explore these entanglements of big-city life. As the lives
of Mirvis’ three couples become
increasingly intertwined, readers’
curiosity will be piqued, just as
Nina’s was when these neighbors
were merely strangers.
—CARLA JEAN WHITLEY

THE TROOP
By Nick Cutter

Gallery
$26, 368 pages
ISBN 9781476717715
eBook available

HORROR

thing more dangerous, deadly and
contagious than he could have ever
imagined. And so begins the terrifying thrill ride that is Nick Cutter’s
The Troop.
Cutter’s decision to alternate perspectives between chapters is a wise
one. Not only does it allow readers
to get to know each character (and
their backstories), but it also keeps
us guessing as to who—if anyone—
is going to make it through the ordeal. They’re a ragtag but close-knit
group: Kent, the arrogant jock, most
popular guy in school; Ephraim
“Eff,” the troubled, anger-prone
youth; Eff’s best friend, Max, earnest
and loyal; Newton, overweight and
socially awkward; and Shelley, a
loner with some unsavory interests.
Reminiscent of Scott Smith’s The
Ruins and with shades of William
Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Stephen King’s “The Body” (on which
the film Stand by Me was based),
The Troop is brutally visceral, pulling readers right into the action,
tapping into our most primal fears:
isolation, hunger, survival. Cutter
is at his best when describing the
ooey-gooeyness of infection—the
stench, the sounds, the texture—and
in articulating the abject and utter
terror of the characters unlucky
enough to witness, or experience,
these ooey-gooey happenings. The
book isn’t for the faint of heart, but if
you’re intrigued by what you’ve read
so far, then chances are you’ll enjoy
succumbing to the thrills of this
highly entertaining page-turner.
—J O E L L E H E R R

It is a cool October night on Falstaff Island, about nine miles off of
Prince Edward Island, and Scoutmaster Tim Riggs is enjoying a sip of
scotch. He can hear his five 14-yearold scouts talking and laughing in
the next room, most likely telling
ghost stories before they fall asleep.
All six are completely unaware of the
horrifying turn their annual camping trip is about to take.
The familiar comfort of their
night is interrupted by the sound
of a motorboat approaching the
island. The boat’s sole passenger is a
grotesquely gaunt, obviously very ill
man who’s so frantic with voracious
hunger that he’ll eat anything, even
a moth-eaten chesterfield sofa. Tim,
a small-town doctor, at first tries to
help the man—and keep him away
from the naturally curious boys.
Tim soon discovers, however, that
the stranger is infected with some-

CLEVER GIRL
By Tessa Hadley

Harper
$25.99, 272 pages
ISBN 9780062270399
eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

Is there anyone who hasn’t wondered which actions and incidents
most gave shape to their lives? In
Tessa Hadley’s Clever Girl, Stella is
the author of her own life, recounting her story in a series of gracefully drawn but honestly expressed
episodes starting in the 1960s and
running to the present day.

FICTION
We first encounter Stella as a
10-year-old girl living with her
mother in a small apartment in
Bristol on the west coast of England.
Though her mother alleges she is a
widow, Stella comes to other conclusions about her absent father’s
real whereabouts. A bright and
dreamy girl, she spends time reading and riding at the local stables.
When her mother remarries, Stella
finds herself chafing against her
stepfather’s conventional household, drawn
instead to
the freedoms
Told in a
promised
series of
by the more
perfectly
permissive
1970s and the
observed
opportunities
moments,
brought by a
Clever Girl
scholarship to
a prestigious
is not about
school.
what you
Clever Girl is
less about what
want your
you want your
life to be,
life to be than
but what
what you do
with what life
you do with
hands you. By
what life
the time she is
hands you.
in her early 20s,
Stella is a single
mother with
two children. School is an impossibility, and she makes ends meet
by keeping house for an English
professor and later working in an art
gallery.
Stella reveals her story as a series
of moments, almost like a picaresque novel. The connecting thread
is her cleverness, here translated
as intellectual capabilities as well
as curiosity about life. Though at
one point she feels as though books
“have let her down,” it is still her
acumen that allows her to provide
the links between one incident and
the next.
Hadley is a consummate writer
who excels at the kind of honest
material details that fully round
every scene. As someone who was
born at roughly the same time as
Stella, I can assure you Hadley’s recreation of the decades from 1960 to
2000 is deliciously accurate. Clever
Girl is an elegant and accomplished
novel that will entertain but also
make you contemplate the trajectory of your own life.
—LAUREN BUFFERD

THE DIVORCE PAPERS
By Susan Rieger

Crown
$25, 480 pages
ISBN 9780804137447
Audio, eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

An epistolary tale told through
emails, interoffice memos, legal
documents and handwritten notes,
The Divorce Papers is a witty and
engaging first novel from author
Susan Rieger. As is obvious from the
title, the book features a divorce at
its center. However, Rieger makes it
about much more as she covers topics ranging from childhood trauma
and fresh romances to office politics
and literary theory.
Sophie Diehl is a criminal law
associate living in New England and
apprehensively approaching her
30th birthday. She is horrified when
her boss hands her a divorce case
on a week when the firm’s experienced divorce lawyers are away; she
prefers the minimal-contact work
she specializes in and, as a child of
divorce herself, wants nothing to
do with handling one. But when her
efforts to extricate herself from the
case fail, she finds herself immersed
in the extremely bitter marriage
dissolution of Mia Meiklejohn (her
client) and her wealthy oncologist
husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim. The
case involves not only infidelity and
dramatic clashes, but also a troubled
10-year-old daughter.
While this plot might sound like
an overwrought soap opera with
a chick-lit slant, the execution is
funny and intelligent. Rieger herself
went to Columbia Law School and
has worked as an attorney and
university administrator, and her
prose—peppered with literary,
historical and philosophical references—is whip smart. And although
there is no traditional narration, the
reader becomes well acquainted
with Sophie and her inner world,
particularly through emails sent to
her best friend Maggie, her new boyfriend, her parents and her charmingly erudite boss, David Greaves.
The narrative flow does stumble
at times, particularly when several
pages of full legal documents are
presented; while Rieger obviously

q&a

LOUIS BAYARD
BY HILLI LEVIN

Into the wild

L

ouis Bayard blends historical
narrative and otherworldly
mystery in his reimagining
of Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt’s
1914 Amazon expedition.
What was your initial inspiration for Roosevelt’s Beast?
That’s a bit shrouded in
mystery. All I can remember is
standing in a Borders—that’s how
long ago this was—and thinking,
“Wait, didn’t Teddy Roosevelt go
on some crazy journey through
the Amazon jungle?”
At that point, I hadn’t yet read
Candice Millard’s The River of
Doubt, so I didn’t know how
close Roosevelt came to death
or how harrowing that journey
really was—backbreaking labor,
disease, starvation, drowning.
The only thing I had, really, was a
question. What would that experience have done to Roosevelt’s
mind—or, to be metaphysical
about it, his soul? The rest of the
book just flowed from there.
Did you get the chance to see
the Rio Roosevelt for yourself?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned
from writing historical novels,
it’s how elusive the past can be.
You can go to Paris, you can go to
London, and I’ve done that, but if
you want to reconstruct Napoleonic Paris or Victorian London,
you have to head to the library.
And that’s what I did. I immersed
myself in primary sources until I
had the clearest possible picture
of Teddy Roosevelt’s jungle. (Plus
I’m fortunate to live in a city that
gets pretty damned tropical in the
summer.)
What made you decide to focus your novel on Kermit instead
of his much more famous father,
Theodore Roosevelt?
I’m always looking for the
blanks in the historical canvas—the people and things that
nobody really knows about.
Here was this gifted, courageous, accomplished young man
who should have had a golden
career—a golden life—and instead he lost his way. And to this
day, nobody can say why. Even
his own family didn’t know why.
So this book is an effort to figure

out, at both the psychological and
symbolic levels, what happened.
You have written extensively
about your experience with
depression: Do you identify with
Kermit, who was also diagnosed?
Yeah, that part of the book
required zero research on my
part. And it makes perfect sense
to me, by the way, that he would
have medicated himself with
alcohol because, in those days,
what else was there? You begin to
understand why alcohol was such
a force in American life—far more
than it is today.
Many of your novels have dealt
with complicated father-son
relationships. What attracts you
to this dynamic?
I do keep coming back to that
theme, and I’m not sure why.
Maybe because being a father is
always kicking my ass. It’s the one
job I never seem to master. On
the page, maybe I can get it right.
Do you have a favorite fatherson relationship in literature?
It’s hard to pick just one. The
Road was pretty damn beautiful.
The Brothers Karamazov. Seize
the Day. Gloucester and Edgar in
King Lear. If I can pluck from the
film medium, Vittorio de Sica’s
The Bicycle Thief has a father-son
relationship that will destroy you.
What are you working on next?
I’m writing a young-adult novel, also historical, with a teenaged
female protagonist. A daughter
this time! I can’t wait.

ROOSEVELT’S BEAST
By Louis Bayard

Holt
$27, 320 pages
ISBN 9780805090703
Audio, eBook
available

HISTORICAL FICTION

29

reviews
has a great enthusiasm for the intricacies of the law, some readers
might find these sections tough to
slog through. But overall, The Divorce Papers is a sharp read and an
impressive debut.
—REBECCA STROPOLI

GEMINI
By Carol Cassella

Simon & Schuster
$25.99, 352 pages
ISBN 9781451627930
eBook available

SUSPENSE

FICTION
world interconnected, she must
have family; she must have someone who misses her. Cleverly but
incrementally, Cassella—a practicing physician as well as an
author—puts together the pieces
of Jane Doe’s mystery even as she
ponders, through Charlotte, the Big
Questions. What is life, anyway? Is it
simply one’s genetics? Does it have
a purpose? What’s the best way to
find love, happiness, peace? Is Jane
Doe still in there somewhere, in her
ruined, swollen, already decaying
body?
As for the mystery’s solution: It
explains much, but that’s all you’ll
learn from this review!
—ARLENE MCKANIC

30

If you’re very observant and know
a little something about the wilder
shores of human genetics, then
you may be able to figure out the
big mystery of Carol Cassella’s new
novel by, oh, page 260 or so. Oh
yes, the title also gives one a hint as
to what’s going on with one of the
book’s well-drawn characters. But
we should start at the beginning.
Gemini concerns a dedicated and
humane doctor, Charlotte Reese,
who comes to be the physician
for an anonymous woman who is
medevaced in from an impoverished
Washington town to Dr. Reese’s
Seattle hospital in the middle of the
night. The Jane Doe is apparently
a hit-and-run victim. Conscious
when she was first found lying in
a ditch by a road, she slips into a
coma on the operating table after a
fat embolism breaks loose from one
of her broken bones and lodges in
her brain. Part of the story concerns
Charlotte’s struggle over whether
to keep Jane Doe alive, or to let her
pass on with some kind of dignity.
The other part of the story has
to do with Charlotte’s boyfriend of
three years, a writer who’s working on a book about genetics. He’s
one of the folks in this book whose
DNA doesn’t work the way it should.
Having inherited neurofibromatosis, as a child he was subject to
seizures and later developed benign
brain tumors—yes, more than one.
Charlotte, who’s desperate to have
a child, doesn’t know if Eric’s a good
prospect for fatherhood, as the risk
of him passing down his affliction is
almost a certainty.
But there’s still the problem of
Jane Doe. Surely, with the whole

BYRD
By Kim Church

their meetings results in a pregnancy that Addie will keep secret, something she regrets deeply. The book is
interspersed with poignant unsent
letters from Addie to the child she
gave up, whom she calls Byrd. Will
Roland, Addie and Byrd reunite?
The reader comes to know the
characters in Byrd extraordinarily
well. Through this knowledge, we
come to care deeply about their successes and failures.
—DAVID W. SCHWEID

KINDER THAN SOLITUDE
By Yiyun Li

Random House
$26, 336 pages
ISBN 9781400068142
Audio, eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

Dzanc Books
$14.95, 228 pages
ISBN 9781938604522

DEBUT FICTION

Kim Church has created an unforgettable and gripping tale about a
young woman’s passage to adulthood in a small town in North Carolina in her excellent debut novel,
Byrd. There are books we like to read
because they provide a window to a
world wholly unfamiliar, but there
are others like Byrd that give insight
into our own lives: our hopes and
dreams, what we’ve done right, opportunities missed. The simple fact
is few of us live the lives we dreamed
of when we were young, or as the
young heroine Addie says, “I have
learned it is possible to become
satisfied with your life too soon.”
She falls in love early, not realizing it
will not last forever. Throughout the
book Addie is looking to recapture
the intensity of that first love, “the
deep down panic of real love, the jolt
she felt with Roland.” The intensity
of first love compared to the pleasures of mature love is one of the
abiding themes of the book. How do
these forms of love compare? Which
is real, which lasts—and can the earlier intensity ever be recaptured?
Years after their original love affair, Addie and Roland fumble their
way back toward each other. One of

Chinese-American Li, who was
born in Beijing and moved to the
U.S. in 1996, is a MacArthur Fellow
and was named one of the New Yorker’s top 20 writers under 40. Her new
novel is penetrating and emotionally tasking, but there’s something
compulsive about it—something
that hooks a nerve and tugs again
and again.
Kinder Than Solitude promises
a mystery at its heart, but solving
the crime is far from this story’s
point. It’s about forcing memory to
the surface, making it relevant and
no longer an element of history as
forgotten as an old Chinese dynasty.
The greatest reprieve from all this
repression and melancholy is the
subdued prose, which unfolds the
tale with immense grace and astonishing insight. This is an intense
and elegant book, a dark tale with
great reverence for the depth of the
human heart.
—CAT ACREE

The death that launches Yiyun Li’s
second novel, Kinder Than Solitude, has been a long time coming.
Twenty years before, Shaoai was
mysteriously poisoned by someone
close to her, leaving her crippled
and diminished. Her death comes
as a great relief for the novel’s three
main characters, Moran, Ruyu and
Boyang—once childhood friends in
China, but now estranged. But with
that sigh of relief comes the truth.
The story unfolds in flashes of
past and present, dipping between
the storylines of the three distant
friends to reveal how they have been
transformed by the poisoning of
Shaoai. Orphan Ruyu, who “defied
being known” and avoids interpersonal connections, now lives in
California and works as a glorified
assistant for a local woman. Moran,
who now lives in Wisconsin, goes
from relishing life’s ideal moments
to removing herself from all moments, past or present. Solitude is
clarity; connection is clutter. But it
is a tenuous insouciance, and news
of Shaoai’s death, immediately
followed by her ex-husband’s own
terminal illness, sends her out of the
shadows. “Sugar daddy” Boyang,
who is the only one still living in
Beijing, cared for Shaoai up until the
end. He is the only one able to recognize the existence of the past, but
even then, its recollection is lacking
in nostalgia.

MANNEQUIN GIRL
By Ellen Litman

Norton
$25.95, 352 pages
ISBN 9780393069280
eBook available

WORLD FICTION

Ellen Litman gives a new twist to
the familiar coming of age/boarding
school story (think A Separate Peace,
Prep, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
in her second novel, Mannequin
Girl. Set in the Soviet Union in the
1980s, it features the precocious
daughter of two teachers whose
life is radically changed when she
receives a diagnosis of scoliosis.
The story begins just before
7-year-old Kat Knopman is due
to start first grade at the Moscow
day school where her parents are
teachers. Bright and just a little bit
spoiled, Kat worships her parents,
the beautiful but imperious Anechka
and softhearted Misha. Young Jewish
intellectuals, they are involved in the
arts and dabble at the fringes of radical politics. But Kat’s dream of being
their star pupil ends when she is sent
to a boarding school on the outskirts
of the city for children with spinal
ailments. Kat proves to be tougher

FICTION
than even her formidable teachers,
unsympathetic peers and grueling
medical regimens, but the consuming disappointment of not being the
healthy golden child she thinks her
parents want proves more restrictive
than any back brace. As she matures,
Kat gradually comes to accept the
flaws inherent in her parents, just as
she begins to outgrow the debilitating disease.
Mannequin Girl is set just at the
beginning of perestroika and what
became the gradual dissolution
of the Soviet system. This brought
more freedom, but it also revealed
an ugly rise in Nationalism and
anti-Semitism, which curtails Kat’s
opportunities as well as those of her
friends and family.
Litman, who was born in Moscow,
was herself diagnosed with scoliosis
and spent many years attending
a similar school/sanatorium. She
writes sympathetically of the shifting
alliances and friendships within a
boarding school, as well as the gritty
details of an adolescence spent in a
full-body brace. In Mannequin Girl,
she has written a sharp and occasionally tender novel with a prickly
protagonist readers can’t help but
care for.
—LAUREN BUFFERD

memory of the real story of Sleeping Beauty has long been buried in
her mind. One night, hearing her
great-grandchild tell the fantastical
version of the tale, the tale of a princess who slept for a hundred years,
Elise decides it’s finally time to tell
the real story: the story of a queen
desperate for a daughter, a treacherous aunt and the curse she brought
to the palace, a war, a plague, a king
striving to save his heir. Elise was
at the center of it all, protecting her
queen, her princess and her own
chance at survival.
Blackwell succeeds at deftly weaving her own elements into a classic story without ever doing either
a disservice, but there’s perhaps
a more important balancing act
she pulls off that makes the novel
even more rewarding: the balance
between Elise’s place in the fairy
tale, and her own personal journey.
This is not Sleeping Beauty’s story,
though she is vital to it. This is Elise’s
story, and not as a supporting character. It’s the story of her love life,
her fears, her hopes, her mysterious
past and her determination, and
Blackwell makes sure it matters
by rendering Elise as a powerful,
vulnerable and inviting voice. The
strength of Elise as a character is the
reason this novel works.
Fans of novels like Wicked and
lovers of fairy tales will no doubt
find something new to love in While
Beauty Slept, as will anyone who
enjoys a layered drama rich with
juicy palace intrigue.
—MATTHEW JACKSON

THE LOST SISTERHOOD
By Anne Fortier

Reimagining a well-trodden fairy
tale is tricky business. Rely too much
on the tropes of the original story,
and the plot becomes wooden,
predictable and dull. Drift too far,
and it’s easy to lose the point of the
exercise. Few writers can pull off
this balance, but with While Beauty
Slept, Elizabeth Blackwell proves
she’s one of them.
For her take on the Sleeping
Beauty story, Blackwell—a former
journalist—shifts focus from the
titular Beauty to Elise, an attendant
to the queen when the Beauty, a
girl named Rose, is born. When we
first meet Elise, she’s an old woman
with great-grandchildren, and the

Ballantine
$27, 608 pages
ISBN 9780345536228
Audio, eBook available

ADVENTURE

grandmother used to regale her
with stories about the lost tribe of
warrior women. Her grandmother
even went as far as to suggest that
she was an Amazon herself, leading
the rest of the family to doubt her
mental capacity.
Diana’s scholarly work at Oxford
University centers on the discovery
and dissection of the Amazon race;
however, other professors warn
her that she is committing career
suicide if she continues to focus on
a part of history that most regard as
completely fantastical.
Enter a well-financed, shadowy
foundation that makes Diana an offer to travel to North Africa to study
her beloved Amazons. It’s perfect
timing for our suffering academic,
who has just ended a relationship.
While working with a mysterious
guide, Nick Barran, Diana begins to
slowly uncover the real history of the
Amazons. She discovers the name of
the first Amazon queen, Myrina, and
learns of her epic journey to save
her kidnapped sisters long ago.
The rest of the novel intertwines
Diana’s story with that of Myrina,
seamlessly floating between past
and present. Anne Fortier, whose
previous novel, Juliet, was also a
historical tale based on a familiar
story, weaves the quests of Myrina
and Diana together to ultimately
show the reader that both women
are pursuing the same goal: to keep
the Amazons from disappearing
forever.
The Lost Sisterhood is a gorgeous
journey from England to North
Africa to Greece, thrilling readers
with beautiful settings, courageous
women and breathtaking adventure.
—ELISABETH ATWOOD

THE ALL YOU CAN DREAM BUFFET
By Barbara O’Neal

Bantam
$15, 400 pages
ISBN 9780345536860
Audio, eBook available

WOMEN’S FICTION

Diana Morgan has focused her
career as a philologist (one who
engages in the study of literary
text and written records), on the
Amazons, the legendary warrior
women of ancient Greece—and with
good reason. They’re rooted in her
own family history. Before disappearing without a trace, Diana’s

When Lavender sends out invitations to her 85th birthday bash, it’s
more than just a celebration. One of
the guests might be lucky enough
to inherit the Lavender Honey Farm

she has so laboriously carved out of
her family land, and in which her
nephews are not interested. With
that in mind she invites three fellow
food bloggers (they call themselves
the “Foodie Four”) to visit and
celebrate the special occasion, and
each responds from the center of a
complicated life.
All of the Foodie Four are smarting from the dings and arrows of inadvertent fortune. Lavender writes
a three-times-a-week food blog to
express her love of the land and as
a forum for organic farming and
animal husbandry. What she does
not tell her readers is that she has
begun to see ghosts of dead friends
and favorite
dogs among
Unexpected
the old trees,
love rears its beehives and
fragrant lavenattractive
der fields that
are so much a
head on a
part of her life’s
weekend
accomplishretreat.
ment.
Ruby is 21
and pregnant
by a husband she no longer loves,
and Ginny is escaping the careless
cruelty of a husband who has left
her behind for years. (Unlike the
famous Dorothy in The Wizard of
Oz, she never wants to go back to
Kansas!) Valerie, a widowed balletdancer, and her teenage daughter,
Hannah, are still mourning the loss
of the rest of their family in a plane
crash.
Barbara O’Neal, who also writes
as Ruth Wind and Barbara Samuel,
has won six RITA awards for earlier
books. (She’s also a former BookPage columnist.) In The All You Can
Dream Buffet, O’Neal touches on
such subjects as the honorable way
to deal with food animals in a meateating civilization, and healthy
vegetable consumption. Portions of
the Foodies’ food blogs also appear,
including a few recipes.
And, as usual, in a top-notch
romance, the men are first-rate:
handsome, bright guys whom any
woman would be proud to attract.
Unexpected love rears its attractive
head as the weekend progresses and
lives are changed in the pace of a
few days, but maybe the blue moon
has something to do with that. A
quick, satisfying read is in store for
all who pick up this book for a fun
time and a foodie fling.
—MAUDE MCDANIEL

31

reviews

NONFICTION
side, and his outdoor-writing bona
fides are put to excellent use here.
Astoria brings to life a harrowing era
of American exploration.
—AMY SCRIBNER

BLOOD WILL OUT

Under the spell of a con man

By Boyd Varty

R E V I E W B Y J O H N T. S L A N I A

Walter Kirn has penned a number of imaginative novels, including
Up in the Air and Thumbsucker, which were both made into movies. But
nothing in the pages of those books could match the bizarre, real-life
experiences Kirn relates in his new memoir, Blood Will Out.
Here is the Hollywood elevator pitch: Kirn befriends a con artist who
passes himself off as an aristocrat, but turns out to be a murderer. Over
a 15-year friendship, Kirn discovers he has more in common with this
charlatan than he cares to acknowledge. Thus, Blood Will Out is as much
a psychological thriller as it is a true crime tale.
The story is full of surprises and strange twists from the beginning,
where we find Kirn a promising young author living in Montana with his
very young wife, Maggie. He is 34; she is 19. She also happens to be the
daughter of actress Margot Kidder and novelist Thomas McGuane. Kirn is
struggling as a writer, popping Ritalin to complete a project, then Ambien
By Walter Kirn
to induce sleep. Maggie is pregnant and working in an animal shelter. A
Liveright, $25.95, 272 pages
disabled shelter dog is in need of a home, and a man identifying himself
ISBN 9780871404510, audio, eBook available
as Clark Rockefeller agrees to the adoption and will pay a generous fee
to the person who delivers the crippled canine to New York City. So Kirn
TRUE CRIME
seizes the opportunity to drive the dog, incontinent and confined to a
wheelchair, to meet this supposed scion of the wealthy East Coast family.
Charmed by this dilettante, Kirn ignores all the warning signs throughout more than a decade of correspondence, phone calls and visits with Clark Rockefeller, who turns out to be Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German
immigrant wanted in the murder of a California man and the disappearance of his wife.
On one level, Blood Will Out is a murder mystery. But Kirn drills deeper, channeling his inner Fitzgerald to
probe his own psyche. Kirn likens himself to a modern-day Nick Carraway, with Clark Rockefeller a later-day Jay
Gatsby, who passes himself off as wealthy and erudite. Then Kirn wonders whether he is any better. Like Fitzgerald, Kirn was a naïve boy from Minnesota who ended up at Princeton. There, he developed an edgy persona,
fueled by drugs and alcohol, to gain popularity as a writer, becoming a con man in his own way.
Blood Will Out is equally dark, edgy, humorous and philosophical. Ultimately, it is a book that proves truth is
stranger than fiction.

ASTORIA
By Peter Stark

Ecco
$27.99, 384 pages
ISBN 9780062218292
Audio, eBook available

HISTORY

32

The damp practically floats off the
pages in Astoria, the sweeping tale of
John Jacob Astor’s attempt to settle
the remote Pacific Northwest coast
in 1810. Astor’s vast wealth enabled
him to send two expeditions: one
over land and one by ship. His plan
was to set up a fur trade, the first on
this particularly harsh stretch of the
West Coast. Whoever could settle the
area would lay claim to a vast area

rich with sea otter and beaver fur,
salmon and other seafood.
It’s hard to decide which party had
the rougher journey. The overland
party climbed snowy mountains,
nearly starved and was attacked
by Native Americans. The seafarers didn’t do much better, a motley
crew of Americans and Scots who
encountered rogue waves, endured
water shortages and squabbled their
way around Cape Horn to the rocky
coastline where the Columbia River
meets the Pacific Ocean.
Author Peter Stark retraces the
journey in spellbinding detail, making use of journals to get inside the
minds of these explorers who set out
just two years after Lewis and Clark
successfully crossed the continent.
“We climbed mountains so high
that I could hardly believe our horses would get over them,” wrote Wilson Price Hunt, whom Astor chose

CATHEDRAL OF THE WILD

to lead the overland party. “We
could advance only with the greatest
difficulty because of the sharp rocks,
and the precipices plunge to the
very banks of the river.”
Almost half of the 140 travelers
died before ever laying eyes on Astoria. Those who did straggle in to the
muddy settlement found something
other than paradise awaiting them.
“[I]magine the rude shock of arrival in the coastal winter or early
spring,” Stark writes. “It’s cold, it’s
raining—as it is nearly two hundred
days a year at the mouth of the Columbia—the infinite gray coastline
stretches away backed by the thick,
dark rainforest—soggy, choked
with rotting cedar logs, prehistoric
sword ferns, and the dark columns
of towering fir and spruce whose
outstretched limbs are draped with
lichen in giant, ghostly cobwebs.”
Stark is a correspondent for Out-

Random House
$27, 304 pages
ISBN 9781400069859
Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

It’s hard to know whether to call
Boyd Varty’s Cathedral of the Wild
a memoir, a true adventure story or
a self-help book. All I know is that
it made me cry with its hard-won
truths about human and animal
nature, distilled by Varty from his
experiences living on Londolozi,
the game reserve his family runs in
South Africa.
Londolozi began in 1926 when
Varty’s great-grandfather bought
the land to use as a hunting destination; when the land passed to Varty’s
father and uncle, they began transforming it into a game conservation
area. During South Africa’s apartheid
era, Londolozi stood out as a place of
unity and respect for all people, and
it was where Nelson Mandela went to
recuperate in 1990 after his imprisonment. It continues to operate
today as a safari destination.
The campfire stories Varty recounts of a childhood in the bush
are by turns hilarious and harrowing. There’s the deadly black mamba
snake slithering over young Boyd’s
legs; he’s pounced on by an overenthusiastic young lion; he learns to
drive a Land Rover at age 10 while
his Uncle John shoots video footage
of a charging elephant: experiences
that taught Boyd how to keep calm
and carry on in a crisis.
The biggest threat to Varty’s family, however, comes not from wild
animals but from desperate humans.
A violent home invasion in Johannesburg traumatizes the family
profoundly and prompts 18-yearold Boyd to leave Africa in search
of healing. His quest takes him
from Australia to India to the South
American rain forest and finally, to a
Native-American healing ceremony
in Arizona. There he reconnects with

NONFICTION
his family’s core work: bringing urbanized and hurting people back to a
relationship with animals and nature.
Returning to Africa is a journey
home for Varty, a path he continues
to walk today with his family at the
Londolozi game reserve. Reading
this book takes the reader on a similar journey, reminding us that our
true home is in nature. Both funny
and deeply moving, this book belongs on the shelf of everyone who
seeks healing in wilderness.
—CATHERINE HOLLIS

TRAPPED UNDER THE SEA
By Neil Swidey

Crown
$26, 432 pages
ISBN 9780307886729
eBook available

HISTORY

On July 21, 1999, a crane lowered
experienced construction diver DJ
Gillis and four other men down a
420-foot shaft to the opening of an
almost 10-mile tunnel beneath Deer
Island in Boston Harbor. At the end
of the day, only three men would
return alive.
In a compelling tale of corporate
and public mismanagement, Boston
Globe Magazine writer Neil Swidey
tells the gripping stories of courage, deceit and devastating loss
that emerged from the Deer Island
debacle in Trapped Under the Sea.
After Boston Harbor was rated
one of the most polluted in the nation, public officials launched a $300
million project in the early 1990s to
pipe wastewater through a tunnel
to the ocean. In spite of significant
early progress, work on the tunnel
eventually bogged down. By the
time Gillis and his co-workers were
hired to unplug a series of smaller
pipes, the companies that built the
tunnel had all but abandoned it,
raising many questions. “How could
this idea of sending divers to a place
as remote as the moon, asking them
to entrust their lives to an improvised, untested breathing system,
have ever made sense to sensible
people?” Swidey asks. “The answer,”
he points out, “lies in the dangerous
cocktail of time, money, stubbornness, and frustration near the end of
the over-budget, long delayed job.”

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents,
Swidey pulls us into the lives of the
divers and the aftermath of the perfect storm of forces that led to the
deaths of two of them. He chronicles
the psychological trauma into which
the three surviving divers spiral,
emphasizing that no matter how
the tunnel project was successfully
completed, “no one came out of this
feeling like a winner.”
In this compelling page-turner,
Swidey grabs us as soon as we enter
that narrow elevator shaft and never
lets up as we accompany the men
on their sad and frightening journey.
—HENRY L. CARRIGAN JR.

THE SPLENDID THINGS WE PLANNED
By Blake Bailey

Norton
$25.95, 272 pages
ISBN 9780393239577
Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

several years. His mother dotes on
her oldest boy, ever faithful that he’d
turn back into the son she knew.
“She missed Scott and wanted to
talk about him, simple as that—to
speculate about his motives, to retrace our steps to the exact point in
time when everything went blooey.”
Anyone who has lived with someone
similarly ill will find this book painfully accurate when it comes to the
mental gymnastics and survivor’s
guilt involved.
The family as a whole is an eccentric bunch, and Marlies, Scott’s
mother, keeps her dignity and a
sense of humor while buying a pistol
to defend herself against her son. If
The Splendid Things We Planned is
a damning portrait of mental illness,
it’s also an unforgettable look at a
family doing its best in the most
trying of circumstances, those where
no good outcome exists.
—HEATHER SEGGEL

THE PERFECT SCORE PROJECT
By Debbie Stier

Blake Bailey has written notable
biographies of authors John Cheever
and Richard Yates, both difficult and
brilliant men. While he was sifting through their lives, he was also
reflecting on his own. The Splendid
Things We Planned is the resulting
portrait, a story of mental illness and
addiction and the difficult orbits
they force upon the healthy. It’s also
a tribute to one family’s best efforts
and inevitable failings.
Bailey’s older brother, Scott, was
born while his parents were still in
college. Re-established in Vinita,
Oklahoma, their father parlayed his
law school education into everincreasing job responsibility while
their mother followed her intellectual bliss and turned their home into
a mini-salon for foreign exchange
students and witty gay men. Young
Blake took in scenes of infidelity and
drug use, but his attention was generally on Scott, a handsome bully
whose seemingly limitless potential
gradually collapsed under relentless
drug use and delusional thinking.
Bailey tells a difficult story with
spare language that allows for
some dry humor. His father remarries a woman who despises both
sons equally, so he largely checks
out where they’re concerned for

Harmony
$25, 304 pages
ISBN 9780307956675
Audio, eBook available

EDUCATION

got so fed up that they briefly moved
in with their father.
In the end, Ethan became a
motivated SAT student who got into
college, besting his mom in math,
and even scoring better than she did
on the essay. Stier improved her own
scores, and while math remained
a thorn in her side, on one test she
scored an 800 in writing, and on
another scored a 760 in reading.
Stier discovered that long hard
work is the only ticket to SAT success,
starting with a solid foundation in
math, grammar, reading and writing.
Her top piece of advice: “Taking full,
timed practice SATs using College
Board material (only) is an essential
ingredient for success on the SAT.”
And by taking these practice tests,
she means taking them many times.
Along the way, she found some
well-known, free online resources to
be a waste of time, and was ultimately impressed by a high-priced
tutoring company that she had
earlier resisted. Good news: She
also found some worthwhile free
resources, including some you’ve
probably never heard of.
Stier’s chronicle of her obsession
is full of self-deprecating humor and
meaty sidebars analyzing everything
from test prep books to SAT grammar and math tips. This is an invaluable resource to read and re-read
during the college testing journey.
—ALICE CARY

Debbie Stier faced a crisis. The
oldest of her two children was
approaching college age, and she
hadn’t saved for tuition. What’s
more, Ethan was, in her words: “a
boy who was ‘happy getting B’s’ and
had gotten an awful lot of them.” He
was neither an honors student nor
an extracurricular overachiever.
When Stier read that high SAT
scores can translate to merit scholarships, she hoped this might be
Ethan’s ticket. The former publishing executive decided to explore test
prep options to see which might
prove best for her son, but her idea
soon took on a life of its own. This
48-year-old mother ended up taking the SAT seven times, hoping to
achieve a perfect score that would
motivate Ethan.
Never fear, Stier doesn’t come off
as a pushy Tiger Mom in The Perfect
Score Project: Uncovering the
Secrets of the SAT. However, it’s fair
to say that things didn’t always go
smoothly. At one point her children

HOW PARIS BECAME PARIS
By Joan DeJean

Bloomsbury
$30, 320 pages
ISBN 9781608195916
Audio, eBook available

HISTORY

Dreaming of April in Paris? In How
Paris Became Paris: The Invention
of the Modern City, astute cultural
observer Joan DeJean argues that
Paris has been a modern, alluring city far longer than we usually
imagine. Although we tend to think
of 19th-century Paris as the bustling
epitome of “la vie moderne,” the
roots of all we know and love about
Paris today actually came into being
in the 17th century.
While DeJean’s depth and scope
of research are impressive, this

33

reviews
fascinating portrait is anything but a
dry history. Like its subject, DeJean’s
biography of Paris emanates charm
and wit. She builds her argument for
the 17th-century origins of modern
Paris piece by piece, unraveling the
stories of how the city’s architectural
elements helped to shape its urban
landscape to make it “the capital of
the universe.”
She begins with the oldest bridge
in Paris—the Pont Neuf—which
served as the 17th century’s equivalent to the Eiffel Tower (which
wasn’t erected until 1889). Created
by Henry IV as a center for his new
capital, the Pont Neuf ushered in
the concept of modern street life,
including a sidewalk for promenading and street vendors.
DeJean unveils fascinating details
about other aspects of the emerging city, covering the Place des
Vosges, the enchanted oasis of Ile
Saint-Louis and the city’s great
boulevards and parks. What makes
DeJean’s analysis so intriguing is her
capacity to weave strands of history
together. She shows, for example,
how the freedom women achieved
by walking along the Pont Neuf and
the city’s boulevards translated into
other areas of social discourse. With
such rich context, How Paris Became Paris is more than a history:
It’s the best kind of travel guidebook.
—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

THE OGALLALA ROAD

NONFICTION
to her family’s farm for a visit and
meets Ward, a rancher from nearby
Smoky Valley. Lonely in middle age,
she is thrilled to have a man in her
life again, as well as a role model for
Jake. Together she and Ward dream
about building a life together and
working the land Bair has inherited
from her parents. From the beginning, however, Bair knows that Ward
does not share her passion for land
preservation. She begins to wrestle
with her family’s part in draining
the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides
the only source of water for the
Western Plains. Eventually, she supports more sustainable use of this
precious water source—even as she
realizes that her actions will drive a
wedge between her and Ward.
Bair’s memoir is a moving and
honest account of a woman trying
to reconcile parts of herself that
seem irreconcilable—daughter,
mother, lover, landowner, environmental advocate. In searching for
unity within herself, she discovers
what she truly values.
—MARIANNE PETERS

In her memoir, The Ogallala
Road, Julene Bair chronicles the last
days of her family’s Kansas farm,
as well as the bittersweet love affair
that feeds her hope of saving the
place her folks called home. She
makes the case that modern farming
practices are inexorably eroding the
vast resources her ancestors took
for granted, and she mourns the
unraveling of the tapestry that once
bound together her family, their history and the land they shared.
Twice divorced and worried about
her teenage son, Jake, Bair returns

On a humid night in Greenwood,
Mississippi, on June 16, 1966,
24-year-old Stokely Carmichael
exhorted his audience of 600 to start
proclaiming “Black Power.”
“All we’ve been doing is begging
the federal government. The only
thing we can do is take over,” he told
the crowd. After several years of organizing sit-ins, demonstrations and
voter registration drives, Carmichael
had come to believe that African
Americans would never achieve
justice until they had the capacity
to rule their own lives. His speech
and the reaction to it significantly
changed the course of the modern
Civil Rights movement.
Between 1966 and 1968, Carmichael was more vilified than
Malcolm X (who was killed in 1965)
had been. The FBI trailed him; politicians accused him of treason; and

the Justice Department came close
to charging him with sedition.
Carmichael’s complex life and
legacy are the subject of Civil Rights
historian Peniel E. Joseph’s engrossing and enlightening biography
Stokely: A Life. The author makes
a strong case that his controversial
subject, more than any other activist
of his generation, shaped the contours of Civil Rights and Black Power
activism. Carmichael’s extraordinary
journey took him from involvement
in early nonviolent sit-ins to serving
as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, from
which he was eventually expelled, to
his role as honorary prime minister
of the Black Panther Party, from
which he resigned.
Carmichael also became an
outspoken critic of U.S. involvement
in Vietnam, and in 1969, he left
America for permanent residence
in Guinea. There, he changed his
name to Kwame Ture and became
an ideologue for a revolutionary
pan-Africanist movement.
Joseph makes us keenly aware
that despite his historic successes,
Carmichael made serious errors
in judgment and had numerous
large and small political failures.
He admired both Malcolm X, with
whose ideas he identified, and
Martin Luther King Jr., who became
a good friend. The morning after
Carmichael’s Black Power speech,
King urged the younger man to stop
using that slogan, but was rebuffed.
This nuanced biography helps us
understand a key player in the Civil
Rights movement and illuminates
the different approaches to social
justice within the movement.
—ROGER BISHOP

MOTHER OF GOD
By Paul Rosolie

Harper
$25.99, 320 pages
ISBN 9780062259516
eBook available

NATURE

Because he seldom cites specific
dates or alludes to what’s happening in the outside world as he’s
prowling through the jungle in Peru,
Paul Rosolie’s Mother of God: An
Extraordinary Journey into the Un-

charted Tributaries of the Western
Amazon has a breathless, dreamlike quality—a tone one might find
in the journals of a relentlessly eager
and factually retentive Boy Scout.
And that’s as it should be since
Rosolie brings a romantic, rather
than a scientific, sensibility to his
travels—at least initially. At the beginning, he’s out for adventure, pure
and simple, not for such pedestrian
pursuits as discovering rare ore or
cataloging medicinal plants. Early
on, though, he’s quick to spot the
encroachments of “civilization” on
his newfound paradise—poachers,
miners, loggers and road builders.
“What is it about our species,” he
asks incredulously, “that allows us to
watch sitcoms and argue over sports
while cultures and creatures and
those things meek and green and
good are chopped, shot, and burned
from the world for a buck?”
An indifferent student, Rosolie
was always a lover of the outdoors.
He made his first foray into the
Amazon in 2006, when he was 18,
and instantly felt a part of that exotic
environment. This book, his first,
chronicles his many journeys into
the jungle and his side trips to India,
where he meets the woman he’ll
marry. Not surprisingly, they bond
over their mutual love of snakes.
Rosolie is a gripping storyteller
who takes us along as he wrestles
giant anacondas, stares closely into
the eyes of a wounded jaguar and,
on a solitary journey into the deepest reaches of the jungle, encounters
what may have been a previously
undiscovered tribe (from which he
prudently runs away).
Rosolie’s enthusiasm for the wilderness and his ability to convey it
poetically makes him an exceedingly
persuasive advocate for conserving
what’s left of the natural world.
—EDWARD MORRIS

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS
By Robert J.
Wagner with
Scott Eyman

Viking
$27.95, 272 pages
ISBN 9780670026098
Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

One of those guys seemingly
born to wear a tux, Robert Wagner

NONFICTION
MISTER OWITA’S GUIDE
TO GARDENING

proves an expert tour guide in the
sometimes dishy, always perceptive
You Must Remember This: Life and
Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age.
In recent years, Wagner has
come to be known for small screen
roles on “Two and a Half Men” and
“NCIS”—as well as deadpan appearances in the “Austin Powers”
film franchise. He was married to
the luminous Natalie Wood (for the
second time) at the time of her stillpuzzling 1981 death. But Wagner
also enjoyed movie stardom in the
’50s and early ’60s. And he has long
mingled with the rich and famous,
having grown up in swanky Bel Air.
And so, with historian-critic Scott
Eyman, R.J., as he’s known, has
written what he calls “a mosaic of
memory.”
The book was inspired, in part,
by the wacky 2002 wedding of Liza
Minnelli and David Gest. Though
“not exactly a Fellini movie, it was
close,” Wagner says, recounting how
Liz Taylor kept a church filled with
guests waiting, because she didn’t
like her shoes; when the ceremony
at last concluded, Gest “tried to suck
the lips off Liza’s face.” (“Ewww,
gross,” whispered actress Jill St.
John, Wagner’s wife since 1990.)
To document a lifestyle “that has
vanished as surely as birch bark
canoes,” Wagner gives us a mix
of history and I-was-there recollections. Like the dinner party at
Clifton Webb’s home, where guest
Judy Garland gave an impromptu
serenade at the piano—for nearly an
hour—as 15 other attendees gathered ’round. Once a caddy for Fred
Astaire, Wagner went on to become
a regular golfing buddy; he played
softball with John Ford’s “group,”
which included Duke Wayne and
Ward Bond; and he spent New Year’s
Eves at Frank Sinatra’s famed Palm
Springs digs.
Wagner tells us about favorite
decorators (the gay Billy Haines
ruled), fashion trendsetters (the
Duke of Windsor), the liveliest and
even most unlikely night spots (including how Don the Beachcomber’s
came to be), all the while dropping
yummy nuggets. (Sinatra’s aftershave was witch hazel, or Yardley’s
English Lavender.)
Wagner does it all with grace—
never taking overt shots at today’s
Hollywood, but making one thing
clear: The so-called golden age was
no cinematic fantasy.

At first, Carol Wall’s memoir, Mr.
Owita’s Guide to Gardening, sounds
like a book you might have read before: An unlikely friendship develops
between two people who appear
to have nothing in common. Giles
Owita is an immigrant from Kenya
who works part-time as a gardener.
Wall is a high school English teacher
and writer whose work has graced
the pages of magazines like Southern Living. But things are not as they
seem. In time, Wall will regard Owita
as the greatest professor she has
ever had. And you will be convinced
she is right.
Their relationship begins predictably. Wall asks Owita to help her
reclaim her lawn, an eyesore that
is becoming the worst looking yard
on the block. He helps her plant
a few beds, tend to the grass and
(memorably) prune a tree. But soon
the relationship veers off script.
We see some of the depth that is to
come in a letter Owita sends to Wall
shortly after viewing her lawn. “I
took the liberty of stopping by your
compound today, even though your
vehicle was not in the driveway. . . .
You have a lovely yard. Of particular
beauty are the azaleas.” His eloquence impresses the English teacher in Wall, who muses, “Compound.
It sounded elegant. Exotic.” It is the
beginning of a rich conversation.
Despite their differences in
race and background, both Owita
and Wall carry family and health
burdens that will be lightened by
sharing them. Through their friendship, both truly help each other—in
real tangible ways that change each
other and their community.
I couldn’t put this book down. I
found myself liking the principal
characters from the opening pages,
and my affection for them never
wavered. If you enjoy inspirational
memoirs or gardening books (or
both), this moving account of a lifechanging friendship is for you.

— PAT B R O E S K E

— K E L LY B L E W E T T

By Carol Wall

Amy Einhorn
$25.95, 304 pages
ISBN 9780399157981
eBook available

MEMOIR

q&a

CAROL WALL
B Y K E L LY B L E W E T T

Growing together

W

hen Carol Wall hired a
neighbor’s gardener
to improve her longneglected yard, she never imagined
that the Kenyan immigrant would
transform her outlook on life as well. In Mister
Owita’s Guide to Gardening, Wall reflects on what she
learned from their special friendship.

What did you like best about
Giles Owita?
Giles was always optimistic. He
always had a smile on his face.
He had a deep knowledge of all
things horticultural. And I always
admired and envied how he was
able to fully immerse himself in
the work that he loved. He always
seemed to give everyone and everything his full attention. And he
had a way of explaining complicated concepts with elegance and
simplicity. He was a teacher at
heart. He taught me to have faith.
You initially resisted some of
his ideas for your lawn. How did
he teach you to love flowers?
Oh, how I wish he were here
to answer that question himself!
When I first told Giles I didn’t
want flowers, he somehow
managed to answer me with
an affirmative response. I now
understand that since he was so
stubborn, this was merely his way
of acknowledging my request
while at the same time not acting
upon it at all. When the flowers
appeared that spring, they led me
to examine a lot of what I’d been
keeping under layers of protective covering: my childhood, my
parents, my family and my illness.
This probably wasn’t Giles’ intention (though who knows, he was
always smarter than all of us) but
that’s what happened.
This was originally a book
about breast cancer, but your
son recommended that you refocus it to include your friendship
with Mr. Owita. How did including the friendship change and
enrich your manuscript?
I was really struggling with
writing this as a memoir about
surviving breast cancer. For some
reason I couldn’t bring myself to
write in the first person, believe it
or not. Introducing Giles helped

me focus the narrative. His character took some of the pressure
off, strangely, and made me more
comfortable with sharing my experience. It’s poetic in a way—our
friendship helped me embrace
and accept life, and his spirit has
helped me explore and accept my
true feelings.
You write that he was the best
professor of your life. Yet that
wasn’t what you expected when
you first met him. Why not?
I expected that he might simply
help to improve my shabbylooking yard. I thought of him as
a hard-working gardener, but assumed that we had very different
life experiences. Little did I know!
What were some of the things
that drew you together?
On the face of it we were as
different as two people could possibly be. But it turns out we had so
much in common: the unexpected
similarities in our life experiences,
the need to adjust to a “plan B,”
the importance of faith and family,
the desire to learn and to teach.
This is a book about so much—
gardening, life, illness, transitions. What were some of the major life changes that you and Mr.
Owita walked through together?
We both had experienced events
that involved loss, fear, guilt and
shame. Our friendship allowed us
to share and process our experiences without fear of judgment.
What do you hope readers will
take away from this story?
Giles taught me so many
things that changed my life. He
embraced and accepted life’s afflictions, something that took me
a while to come around to. (His
cane in my study reminds me of
that.) In the end, I guess it’s that
sometimes the loveliest secrets
and treasures appear where we
least expect them.

35

children’s

LOIS EHLERT

INTERVIEW BY JULIE DANIELSON

I

t’s a frigid day in Milwaukee when I call author-illustrator Lois Ehlert to talk
about her newest book, The Scraps Book: Notes from a Colorful Life. Not
surprisingly, she is inspired.

“It is these gray winter days that
stir my creativity,” Ehlert says. “I am
so happy to stay in and work. I am
sitting here right now with a bag of
scraps on my drawing board. I have
green paint underneath my fingernails. I am as happy as a clam.”
It is this abundant creativity we
have to thank for Ehlert’s long list
of distinctive picture books for children in a career that has spanned
decades and which once began with
the study of graphic design.
Ehlert’s signature collage illustra-

yet never cloying bits of wisdom for
young, aspiring artists. There is a real
energy and spontaneity in Ehlert’s
work, and the book captures that
with style.
“It isn’t the kind of book you do
when you are 21 years old,” Ehlert
says. “I am not a formal person that
likes to do a biography. That is not
my world.”
The book was entirely her idea,
not an editor’s or agent’s. “You have
thoughts like this as you get older,”
Ehlert explains. “I wanted to share.

tions, which celebrate color, shape
and form, immediately attract the
curious eyes of the youngest of
readers. In 1989, she received the
Caldecott Honor for Color Zoo, and
in 2006 the inventive Leaf Man, a
story told with real autumn leaves,
was awarded a Boston-Globe Horn
Book Award. Early in her career,
Ehlert illustrated the perennially
best-selling Chicka Chicka Boom
Boom, written by Bill Martin Jr. and
John Archambault.
The Scraps Book: Notes from a
Colorful Life is an autobiographical
picture book, filled with old family
photos, bits of art, Ehlert’s inspirations, early sketches and book dummies. It is a splendid book, telling
the story of Ehlert’s childhood and
subsequent career as an illustrator, while also dispensing earnest

I do a lot of workshops with children
at the art museum here. I delight in
it. I need to set it down while I still
have my marbles.”
Ehlert also shares photos of her
personal collections in the book,
everything from multicolored fabrics to folk art to ice fishing decoys.
“There are a lot of things that call
out to me, ‘Lois, buy me,’ ” she jokes,
adding that it’s been frequent travels
over her lifetime that have generated so many rich and diverse collections. “The world is full of such
interesting things. I have Indian
moccasins, textiles from all over the
world. I have African masks, and I
have pre-Columbian pots and a lot
of books. I like fabric, so I have a
lot of textiles with embroidery and
stitching. I have pieces of clothing,
children’s dresses from India, lovely

things that probably will not exist
in this world any longer. [They
are from] a different time when
people spent more time doing
handwork.”
The Scraps Book is not only
an affirmation of art, color and
creativity, but it also serves as a
touching tribute to Ehlert’s family.
Raised by parents who encouraged her art—“I was lucky; I grew
up with parents who made things
by their hands”—she always had art
supplies and tools at the ready.
One spread features photos of her
dad’s brush and her
mother’s pinking
shears. “It is another
example of recycling,” Ehlert says.
“It is [about] growing
up with not much
money—but a lot of
spirit. I think that is
also what I am trying
to say. If you look at
some of my books,
[you see that] you do
not have to go to the
art supply store for
everything. Look into
nature.
“I asked my
mother one time if she really knew
what she was doing for me,” Ehlert
adds. “She said no, that they just
knew I was interested in [art]. Isn’t
it wonderful that a parent is that
perceptive?”
Nor did her parents discourage
her from art school. “You would
think they might, because I was the
oldest of three children. How was
I going to make a living, and how
was it going to work out? You just
have to follow your instincts. I have
had other jobs, but if you love to do
something, do it as well as you can.”
Find a spot for creating art, get
comfortable and begin, Ehlert advises aspiring artists in the book. Oh,
and don’t forget to get messy. Given
that her tools are often as simple
as scissors, construction paper and
glue, it’s far from an intimidating

notion for children, rich or poor. It’s
empowering as well, one of many
qualities that make this book special.
“My wish,” Ehlert says, “is that
there will be little kids like I was,
who read that and say, ‘Well, if she
can do it, I can do it.’ It may take
them 20 years. I was a relatively late
bloomer.”
And it all began, as noted on the
first page of The Scraps Book, with
a young girl who read all the books
on the library shelves and thought
maybe someday she could make a
book.
When I point out to Ehlert how
much I love that opening, she says,
“I had no clue how to do [it]. It is
kind of funny, but look what happened.”
Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before
Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

Somewhere deep within the African jungles of Gabon, a young street
boy searches for a family, a home and a purpose beyond simply fighting
for survival. While Threatened is the account of his learning to survive in
the wild, it’s also the tale of his learning to trust and accept others, even
if they don’t share the same genus and species.
Luc—an AIDS-orphaned child of the slums who’s only vaguely aware
of his own age—was sold to a local debt collector as an indentured servant to pay off his mother’s hospital bills for her unsuccessful care. Barely scraping by, Luc one day befriends an Arab professor and researcher
from the National Geographic Society who appears at the bar where Luc
works illegally for pocket change. The “Prof,” as Luc calls him, has traveled to Gabon—home of the largest concentration of chimpanzees in the
world—in hopes of becoming the next Jane Goodall and bringing more
national attention to the chimps’ fragile existence.
By Eliot Schrefer
Scholastic, $17.99, 288 pages
Prof uses cunning and deceit to procure Luc from the debt collector
ISBN 9780545551434, eBook available
as his research assistant. Prof, Omar (his pet vervet monkey) and Luc set
Ages 12 and up
up camp in the middle of the rainforest and fortuitously stumble upon a
small family of chimpanzees. As Luc observes the wild beasts that once
FICTION
haunted his nightmares, he learns firsthand of their humanity—from
their ferocity as much as from their kindness and personalities—and develops better relationships with them
than he ever has with people. But with hunters and far worse dangers surrounding them, Luc must constantly
put his life on the line to protect this blended family he’s come to love.
Author Eliot Schrefer, whose novel Endangered was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, combines his
interest in conservation and education in Threatened—his eighth novel overall and the second in his Great Ape
Quartet—to draw his readers ever nearer to the edge of this primitive, natural world. He asks us to jump with
him into the unencumbered jungle to see all the beauty and mystery that only the wild can offer.

The Mirk and Midnight Hour
blends historical romance, suspense and the paranormal into a
novel that’s a Southern Gothic tale
at heart.
Violet Dancey is left to mind
Scuppernong Farm in Mississippi
while her father fights the Yankees.
Already heartbroken by the death of
her twin brother, Violet is beginning
to question whether the Confederacy is in the right when she finds
a wounded Union soldier named
Thomas in her old childhood hideout. Their relationship turns into a

romance, but it’s risky business in
more ways than one.
Author Jane Nickerson juggles a
large and complex cast here, and
there’s voodoo, violence, mayhem,
laudanum addiction and telepathic
communication with bees to keep
the players busy, yet the book maintains an easy pace. There’s a scary
climactic scene when Violet must
come between Thomas and the
people who have been treating his
injuries, but most of the action here
is slow-burning suspense. The contrast between a community bazaar
and the war roiling in the distance
adds to the eerie sense of a world on
the brink of big changes.
Violet’s awakening to the politics
of slavery after a lifetime of friendship with people her family owned
is touching and handled gracefully,
giving The Mirk and Midnight Hour
extra depth and something to ponder after the thrills have worn off. It’s
an exciting story—juicy, romantic
and at times quite chilling.
—HEATHER SEGGEL

“Your father doesn’t have any enemies. He’s an accountant.” Daniel
Pratzer’s mom couldn’t be more
wrong about her mild-mannered,
potbellied husband.
Mr. Pratzer’s secret past begins to
unravel quite by accident. Struggling
freshman Daniel has joined the
chess club because . . . well, he isn’t
great at sports. When two popular
seniors invite him to participate in
a father-son chess tournament, he
laughs. After all, he’s just a beginner,
and his father doesn’t even play. But
the seniors have done some re-

search: Morris W. Pratzer was ranked
a grandmaster of chess.
Mr. Pratzer reluctantly agrees to
attend the tournament, but as the
weekend unfolds, Daniel starts to
understand the complex reasons
why his father left the game: Competitive chess almost killed him, and
he has an enemy who understands
the depth of his weaknesses.
Grandmaster is a page-turning
read, full of authentic details that
offer a fascinating glimpse into tournament chess. It’s also a compassionate look at the choices we make,
and how difficult situations bring
families closer in unexpected ways.
—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

If Lily Potter and Voldemort had
a love child, he would be Nathan
Byrn. Born out of an illicit love affair
between a White Witch and a Black
Witch, Nathan is an abomination,
a Half Code. His father, Marcus, is
the vilest Black Witch in all of Great
Britain. His White Witch mother
committed suicide in shame.
Two years before Nathan’s 17th
birthday—when he will receive
his inherent magical powers—the
Council of White Witches imposes
harsh regulations on him: He’s not
allowed to leave his home without
permission; he can’t be in the same
room with White Witches; and he
can’t be with the girl he loves without the threat of death. The Council
kidnaps him and takes him to Scotland, where he is caged, studied and
trained as a weapon to kill his father.
But Nathan is not a killer—yet.
The first in a trilogy, Half Bad is a
fast-paced, compelling story about
the many shades of good and evil.
The White Witches are considered
to be the good guys, but the Council
spends much of its resources seeking out Black Witches for torture and
death. Nefarious characters and a
cliffhanger ending will entice readers and leave them wanting more.
— K I M B E R LY G I A R R A T A N O

37

reviews
HALF A CHANCE

CHILDREN’S

Snapshot summer
REVIEW BY SHARON VERBETEN

When Lucy’s family moves to an old house on a New Hampshire lake,
she must adjust to new surroundings and new friends—all without her
father, a professional photographer, who is gone on yet another extended business trip. While she admires her father’s talents, the tween is also
eager to show him that she, too, has an eye for photography and capturing stories through the camera lens. She gets her chance when she learns
her father is judging a photo contest and secretly decides to enter.
She quickly makes friends with Nate, the boy next door, and his family,
including his charming Grandma Lilah. They ask her to join their “loon
patrol” trips to monitor the loons on the lake. Eager to document the
lake, the loons and the mountains, Lucy brings her camera—but photographs, full of dimension and truth, don’t lie. One image Lucy takes—a
poignant but piercing picture of Grandma Lilah—is all too real and painful, divulging a story and a future no one wants to admit.
By Cynthia Lord
In Half a Chance, Newbery Honor winner Cynthia Lord (Rules)
Scholastic, $16.99, 224 pages
creatively weaves a touching story and tackles important issues for this
ISBN 9780545035330, eBook available
age group, including isolation and the complexities of friendship. It also
Ages 8 to 12
introduces Alzheimer’s disease in an understated and uniquely underMIDDLE GRADE
standable way. During an unforgettable summer in New Hampshire, set
against the backdrop of the photography contest, Lucy learns about the
roots of family, the ties of loyalty, the power of storytelling and what it means to be a true friend.

There’s something enchanting and timeless about the art
of Barbara McClintock. Where’s
Mommy? is a lovely follow-up to
Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and
Mary, her previous collaboration
with writer Beverly Donofrio. In the
first book, Mary formed a friendship with a mouse; now, Mary’s
daughter Maria has a secret bond
with Mouse Mouse, unbeknownst to
their moms. This happy coexistence
comes alive in McClintock’s illustrations, brimming with exquisite details and creative parallels between
the two worlds. The mouse dwelling brings to mind The Borrowers:
A colorful sock becomes a rug;
clothespins form a bed frame; and a
thimble serves as a teacup.

There’s a crisis at hand, however.
Maria’s mother seems to have disappeared, just as Mouse Mouse’s mom
is nowhere to be found. Donofrio’s
spot-on text moves the story along
with increasing urgency, and preschoolers will delight in the frenzied
search for these two moms and the
reassuring twist at the end. Where’s
Mommy? manages to straddle
the best of two worlds, serving up
a bounty of old-fashioned treats
infused with just the right touch of
modernity. Here’s hoping this won’t
be the last of Mouse Mouse and
Maria’s lively adventures.
—ALICE CARY

trick-or-treating on Halloween night
to go with Dalton and Jenna to the
new haunted house in town, they
didn’t know what to expect. What
happened, however, was beyond
any of their wildest imaginations.
In Sky Raiders, the first book in
the new Five Kingdoms series by
Brandon Mull, Dalton and Jenna are
kidnapped from the basement of the
haunted house and taken through
a mysterious tunnel. Cole pursues
them and finds himself in a place
like nowhere else on Earth.
In fact, Cole and his friends are
no longer on Earth—they are in the
Outskirts, a collection of five kingdoms that exists between reality and
imagination. After a failed escape/
rescue, Cole and his friends are separated. Dalton and Jenna are sent to
the High King, while Cole is sold to
the Sky Raiders, where new slaves
have a life expectancy of two weeks.
While working for the Sky Raiders,
Cole meets Mira, an unusual girl
with a big secret, and helps her escape. But this is only the beginning
of the dangers they will face.
Like Mull’s Fablehaven and Beyonders series, Five Kingdoms: Sky
Raiders is fast-paced and exciting
from the first page, drawing in read-

ers with multifaceted, strong characters and keeping them enthralled
with an intricate and fascinating
story. Sky Raiders will be enjoyed by
Mull’s many fans, or anyone looking
for imaginative worlds and nonstop
action.
—KEVIN DELECKI

Casey Snowden lives for baseball,
almost literally—his dad and granddad run a school for umpires, where
Casey and his best friend Zeke spend
all their time. It helps Casey forget
his absent mother, who keeps calling
to re-establish visitation, and provides inspiration for his future career
as an award-winning sportswriter.
Author Audrey Vernick (Water
Balloon) brings joy and good humor
to a story with some tough realities
at its core. The novel culminates in
a day when the town comes out to
heckle the students while they call
a game, to give them a taste of what
their jobs will entail. By then, Casey’s
faith in his favorite player, his own
objectivity and his assessment of his
mother have all been challenged,
yet he’s resilient. The economic
downturn has slowed attendance
at the family’s school, but when his
grandfather asks if Casey wants to
stay, he doesn’t miss a beat: “That’s
like asking if I think my blood will
always be part of my body.”
A subplot involving Zeke’s reality
TV obsession is funny and dovetails
with the main storyline in a surprising way. The story Casey decides to
write for his school paper leads him
to realize he’s not as objective as he’d
previously thought, but he takes his
lumps with humility. The umpire’s
need to confidently make a call in
the heat of the moment is something
we could all stand to work on.
Screaming at the Ump will be a
hit with baseball fans, but this nonfan found it smart, funny, compassionate and a wise look at ethics and
integrity in sports and daily life.
—HEATHER SEGGEL

SPRINGTIME
BY ROBIN SMITH

meet JOHN HIMMELMAN

The bugs and the birds

E

ven if the weather is still cold, it’s time to start
thinking about the change in seasons. Springtime
means new beginnings and the chance to play
outside and appreciate nature. Preschoolers and their
parents and teachers will love these three new picture
books that celebrate the joys of nature.
Jennifer Ward teams up with
master paper artist Steve Jenkins
in Mama Built a Little Nest (Beach
Lane, $17.99, 40 pages, ISBN
9781442421165, ages 4 to 8). From
the title page, where a cactus is used
as a wren’s nest, to the
final spreads where
the reader realizes that
a bed is a nest for a
person, the young lap
listener can celebrate
nests of all sorts. The
gently rhyming text
(which can be sung to
the tune of “Mary Had
a Little Lamb”) is easy
to follow and is presented in a generous
typeface. Smaller type
follows later, and this is
where the author presents the book’s more
scientific information.
Budding bird lovers
will find lots to appreciate, from woodpeckers and hummingbirds to cowbirds
and penguins. Jenkins’
cut-paper collages,
so familiar in many
other nature books,
are stunning and
make excellent use of
white space. Ward’s
light humor makes
these short poems
unforgettable:
“Daddy built a little
nest— / now don’t
gross out—with spit.
/ Who would have
thought that spit would make / the
perfect place to sit?”

A BUG’S WORLD
Some Bugs (Beach Lane, $17.99,
32 pages, ISBN 9781442458802, ages
4 to 8), written by Angela DiTerlizzi
and illustrated by Brendan Wenzel,
is another fine book for the very
youngest reader. Bugs—insects and
spiders alike—are endlessly fascinating, aren’t they? With the sim-

plest of text and effortless rhyme,
DiTerlizzi tells a lot: “Some bugs
sting. Some bugs bite. Some bugs
stink.” Turn the page for the kicker:
“And some bugs fight!” The collage,
crayon and paint illustrations show
bugs in their natural
environments and are
sure to bring a chuckle
to the reader, no matter
how old. Each insect is
shown with exaggerated bug eyes (pun intended), often looking
directly at the reader.
The final page reveals
a marvelous surprise:
The previous spreads
have been close-ups
of the child’s backyard,
which is now shown in
its entirety. Delightful!

GROWING UP
Seeds live in the soil
and are reluctant to
make their way to the
surface in Rooting for
You (Disney-Hyperion,
$16.99, 32 pages, ISBN
9781423152309, ages
3 to 5), written by
Susan Hood and illustrated by Matthew
Cordell. One little
green seed (a pea?) is
NOT coming out of
the earth. Alone with
the earthworms and
cicadas, he seems
nervous and worried.
Just like teachers
and parents cheer
for children, all the little earthy
critters cheer on our little pea as he
sticks out one little root—and then a
shoot, and so on.
The book works regardless of
whether young readers recognize
the seed as a symbol for new experiences, so it’s no big deal if the message goes unnoticed. Whether your
little one is heading for preschool or
for college, let her know that you are
rooting for her!

DUCK TO THE RESCUE
John Himmelman has written and
illustrated more than 60 children’s books.
The animals on the Greenstalk farm love
solving problems (er, trying to). This time,
it’s Duck to the Rescue (Holt, $16.99, 32
pages, ISBN 9780805094855). Himmelman lives in Connecticut with his family.